From: Denali, Alaska
To: Anchorage, AK
Miles today: 136, 0
Total miles: 10690
I drove the 135 miles or so from the McKinley View Hotel
to Anchorage in a foggy, cold drizzle. I
could see gigantic mountains disappear into the fog and clouds as rode though
the Alaska Range, and I am sure the views would have been fantastic on a clear
day. It was still a nice ride; I kind of
felt like I was winding my way through enormous ghosts. My fingers and toes got cold for the first
time on this trip. Once I got about 40
miles outside of Anchorage, the road turned into divided highway. I rode past Wasilla (hi Sarah!), but didn’t
stop. I got to Anchorage and checked
into the nice hotel I had booked for our stay.
It was just a few hours later that I left for the Airport to pick up
Karen in a rental car.
The next day, Friday (July 3), was “at large” in the
city. I had planned to have my tires
changed back to road tires at the Anchorage Honda motorcycle shop, but they were
unable to actually get any suitable tires despite my talking to them about it
three months ago. Well, if a Honda shop
can’t actually get ahold of some Honda-compatible tires, I don’t think I want
them working on my cycle anyway. The
knobbies I got in Edmonton are worn, but still have a few thousand miles on
them.
Anyway, Karen and I did a lot of shopping and exploring,
and had a great time. We tried to drive
south of the city to the edge of the Kenai Penninsula (“Alaska’s Playground”),
but traffic and road construction prevented us from getting very far. Back in town, Karen found a sign outside a
photography shop that said “sunset photo-safari tours” that lasted about four
hours, and they had two seats available for that evening, so we took them.
It turned out that the guy leading the tour was a
professional photographer named Jeff Shultz, who for years has been the
official photographer of the Iditarod race; the shop and these tours were how
he paid the bills the rest of the year. His wife joined us, along with another
professional photographer named Todd Salat, who specializes in Aurora photos.
Both were very approachable and just great people. They took us to some great spots to get
photos, and even gave me (with my android phone camera) a few very helpful
pointers. For example, here is the same
picture of Karen against the sunset (about 11:30 pm) without and with the HDR (“high
dynamic resolution”) switch on. Who knew?
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| Karen at the base of Flat Top Mountain, near Anchorage. About 11 pm. |
We also got some great, totally unexpected shots of a
mother moose and her calf, right by the side of the road on the outskirts of
Anchorage. Also, here is a nice shot of the alluvial plane on which Anchorage
rests from the base of a nearby mountain called Flattop. On the whole, this tour was the highlight of
our day.
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| Moose and calf by the roadside, Anchorage. |
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| Anchorage skyline, at center. |
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