On Friday, as we neared
Anchorage, the “hub-hub” of the freeways and the city shocked us; we had ridden the lonely road away from the crowds for quite a while and liked the feeling.
But, on Saturday, a sunny day, we did enjoy
Anchorage and its people; in the end it is not a “big” city, it is very livable.
We will remember Anchorage fondly. Curt picked us up in town to spend an evening at his and Claudia’s house (they are one of the couple we befriended on the ferry). They have a heavenly location (figuratively and physically) way above the city. The view is phenomenal. They have invited us to stay in their guest cottage on our way out of the Kenai Peninsula and we are looking forward to it.
The BMW/Kawasaki/Triumph dealer on West Potter gave us fantastic service at very reasonable prices; thank you Brandon for coordinating this for us. Julia says: “it’s a mighty fine tune-up”.
We walked around Lake Hood – the largest base in the world for pontoon planes/hydravions – the sheer number of planes is baffling. I did not realize there were so many De Havilland Beavers still in use in the world -- in just one basin I counted ten of them. Neither did I expect the preponderance of Super Cubs; I expected to see more Huskies and Scouts replacing the aging Cub fleet. Airplanes on floats look good, especially when there are many of them in the air and on the water at the same time. Personally, I think Cessnas 170’s, 185’s and 207’s look their best on floats.
We enjoyed good Vietnamese food at a place on Spenard Avenue with an unlikely Vietnamese name: Ray’s Place.
On the return from Kenai, we stayed with Kurt and Claudia. As mentioned above, their log home – they built it themselves – commands a panoramic view over the Turnaround Arm (the bay south of Anchorage) and the Kenai Mountains in one direction, over downtown Anchorage then beyond over the Alaskan Range and even Mt McKinley! The place is very cozy and quiet, we loved it. We stayed in the cute log guest cottage; it was great. As always, friendly fellowship with German folks is filled with good hearted laughter and this was no exception. Brad and Karen (the other motorcycle riding couple we met on the ferry) came down for a dinner and good times. We toyed with future two wheel “odyssey” destinations for the six of us…
Kurt gave me the run of his garage and his help to fabricate mud flaps for the front fenders of our motorcycles. It will help in the next few stages as we go through road repair sections and a 100 miles un-paved stretch between Chicken, AK and Dawson City, YT.
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