Looking up 4th street towards the mountains. The low cloud drifting out of the valleys towards Cook Inlet

No trips out today, so I spent the morning wandering round downtown Anchorage towards the inlet and past the railroad station, then back up towards 4th street again.

On one of the main car parks there was the Sunday Fair, which, looking at the stalls, is a bit like Boston’s Quincy Market – everyone seemed to go there for breakfast and there was the usual selection of pancakes and doughnut stands to the slightly more unusual reindeer burgers and sausages, moose burgers, Ox burgers, and Alaskan salmon chowder on offer. Some of the other stalls had tourist offerings – “I’ve Been To Alaska” shirts, fleeces and baseball hats to craft stalls. I even passed Anchorages only fortune teller. One or two of the more unusual ones were the NRA stall (National Rifle Association) selling lottery tickets to win a gun to one guy who was exhibiting a custom chopper built by Orange County Choppers (OCC) from the TV programme American Chopper

Feroz had gone off to check on the progress of work being done on the aircraft…. not anything major, just the landing light being replaced. He also wanted to check that we had no oil leaks after having the oil changed in Nome a few days ago.  Some of the others decided to get a bit of culture and headed off towards the museum and others decided to do a bit of shopping. The rest got taxis and went out to Merrill Field to check up on the progress of maintenance work on their aircraft.

This evening at 6:00 pm we have a flight briefing meeting ready for the flight down to Ketchikan in the morning. We are not sure if Will and Mike will be able to make it down to Ketchikan with us in Will’s Bonanza. The latest news was the cracked cylinders were off the engine and the new cylinders had arrived. Their exhaust also had a crack and was due to go to the welders tomorrow. So it might be a late departure for them, or they were talking about catching us up in either Seattle or Billings, Montana in a couple of days. Fingers crossed that they will be able to fly out tomorrow and catch us up.

I guess my next post will be from Ketchikan… see you there!

I’ll leave you with a few views of Anchorage.

As usual, resume own navigation and watch for traffic.

S

Walking down towards the railroad station. The bar some of us had dinner in on the first night is on the right. We sat out on the deck overlooking Cook Inlet

Anchorage railroad station

One of Alaska Railroads first engines

The clouds coming off the mountains behind C Street bridge. The bridge crosses Ship Creek and leads to Government Hill and Elmandorf AFB

Anchorage Market

Anchorage Market

Anchorage Market

A 5 week old sled dog- in serious training!

.... yep..... still training!

Anchorage Market

Anchorage Market

The US Post Office building......

.... suitably decorated.