The Last of Alaska

We finished up our two-week vacation to Alaska by leaving Denali and driving back to Anchorage.  In Anchorage, we stayed overnight at the Embassy Suites, and the next morning, we finished up laundry and pool time before we checked out.  We still had the majority of the day before our red-eye flight, so we drove around Anchorage a bit.

First, before leaving Denali, I forgot I had this on my phone.  This picture was taken outside of the restaurant where Andrew works.

It's a chopped up school bus, they use as a motorhome of sorts, along with a tow behind area for their 4-wheelers.  Now, Jennifer pointed out it had a smokestack, so it's "high-tech."  That was a totally random sighting.

This is the restaurant where Andrew works.  The burgers we had there was absolutely huge and delicious.

 On the way from Denali to Anchorage, we stopped for lunch in Talkeenta.  We found our way to this delicious restaurant, West Rib Pub and Grill.

They advertise the biggest burger in the state at over five pounds.  No, we didn't try it.

The kids enjoyed some ice cream.

Views of McKinley from Talkeetna

Bush plane landing in Talkeetna

Now, to Anchorage...we couldn't see any of this the day we arrived due to fog.

We had to stop by the ULU shop when we returned to Anchorage.  We had stopped there on our first day.  Ulu's are a local knife that everyone swears by here.  We saw them all over the state, and this is where they are made (except for the "Made in China" ones I found at several locations).  This was a really cool shop, and I'm glad we stopped back in because this day, they had free ice cream! We all tried their local Alaskan flavors including Fireweed-Edward  and Alaskan Berry-Martha and Luke, Vanilla-Alex and Madison (Jennifer, both were really good-the berry had a lot of the local berries in it you showed us).

 Since we had a full free day before our flight, we checked out the Alaska Zoo, home to many Arctic type animals.

 Just recently, a moose had been born.

After all this, we made our way to the airport and rental car return.  We had a really fantastic trip.  Our flight was delayed about and hour and a half out of Anchorage (left after 1:00 AM local time), which caused us to miss our connections in Denver and Charlotte.  The kids were asleep before the plane even took off from Anchorage, and because it barely gets dark, I had a good view of the mountains and surrounding area as we gained altitude (Edward was already asleep too).  We were in Denver long enough to get our new flight (that took an hour), grab some breakfast, and reboard.  Luke slept that whole time too at the airport!  When we got on our next flight, I sat with him, handed him a sandwich, and he gave me the "Where did you get that?" look.  He had been out cold. 

We are very grateful for safe travels and a great trip.  It was so good to see Jennifer and Andrew again; we always enjoy visiting their homes.