Day 2 -- Anchorage and Palmer

This morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before setting out to get our rental car. The hotel shuttle took us to the Avis Rent-A-Car in downtown Anchorage where we met up with Betty who had taken our reservation over the phone. Lets take just a second to discuss Betty. . . Her hands looked as if she had spent more time assembling cars than renting them. Her fingernails were in an incredible state of disarray--jagged and disgusting and dirty. (Amanda, she made Scotto look like a hand model.) I thought initially it was just me being hyper-sensitive. (Clean hands and nails and what not being a pet issue of mine.) But, no. When Betty handed my mom a pen to sign the rental agreement, she almost passed out. Things were off to a great start. . .

After getting the car we went to the market near our hotel to stock up on snacks for our day out. Here are several pictures of our market adventure. You will notice that things in Alaska are quite a bit more expensive than items in the lower 48. Everything must be flown in and the prices our outrageous. Seafood is everywhere. Take a look:

After the City Market, we headed north of Anchorage to one of Alaska's many state parks. We hiked through all of the park's trails and saw some amazing scenery. The salmon are running right now, and last night several hikers saw a mother bear and her cub. We didn't get that lucky, but we were able to get several shots of salmon in the pools around the trails. The orange and black are Sockeye and the grey-ish ones are Chinook.

After the state park, we went slightly further north to Palmer where the State Fair is held and where they boast ridiculously large vegetables. (the fair has a 19 lb. carrot) Alaska in famous for its wildflowers and at the Palmer visitor center we were able to get several shots of flowers and some big veggies. Check out the size of the cabbage and rhubarb.

Once back in Anchorage we hit a few souvenir shops and went to an imax type theatre to see a movie about Alaska's heritage that my mother had read about. The movie was interesting save that fact that the imax-ness of it made my mother so sick she almost threw-up. The theatre next door was normal size and featured a movie about Alaska's great earthquake in the 1960's--the worst earthquake in the history of North America. It was narrated by a guy named Claus that teaches at the U of A in Fairbanks. His accent was so heavy that he could hardly be understood. PLUS, when they started showing photos of actual earthquake footage and were telling the story of that day--the seats started moving and banging about as if the viewers were in the earthquake too. My mother is no longer allowed to pick activities.

We're now back at the hotel for some sleep and some time to pack up before heading down to Seward tomorrow for a 6 hour boat tour of the Kenai Fijords National Park. We will be seeing glaciers, hopefully whales, along with a variety of other wild life. And, if my mom could handle the imax so well, imagine how she's going to totally kick ass on the open ocean's choppy glacial waters. . .

[The photo thing isn't working again--I'll try again later to see if I can get some images uploaded.]