I am writing this on Tuesday, 9/10.

We spent a day and a half of our vacation in Anchorage. Some of the things we would like to have seen were closed. Saturday, we saw the Anchorage Museum. It’s a combination art museum, Native American culture museum, and science center. The Native American exhibit was done in conjunction with the Smithsonian. The quality, quantity, and general tenor of the exhibit were all excellent. The science center section had some really fun toys. There weren’t a lot of people there. We weren’t the only adults playing with the exhibits.

We stayed at a most unusual B & B Saturday evening. The owners had added on to their house to create several suites. We had a complete private suite with bedroom, bath, living room, kitchen, and eating area. The furnishings were high quality. The breakfast was good. We took advantage of the DVDs offered by the host couple to watch a movie in our room Saturday evening. It was nice having a relaxing evening.

View from Kincaid Park

Sunday we visited the air museum. A couple of the bush pilot exhibits showed promise, but overall the museum was underwhelming. The museum had write-ups on several of the more famous bush pilots. It seems that being a bush pilot was kind of like being a red-shirt in Star Trek. They all died young in airplane accidents. The rain stopped, so we finished our vacation with a hike in Kincaid Park.

The overnight flight home was broken into three segments of 3 to 4 hours. Danita was able to sleep quite a bit. I took several cat naps. Our vacation was blessed with untroubled travel. No flights were delayed. No baggage was lost. Danita lost one very inexpensive earring. I lost a pair of flip-flops. We had one issue with the rental car which could have been serious but wasn’t. The oil warning light turned on on our drive back from Denali State Park. I haven’t seen an oil light turn on in many years. There wasn’t room to get off the road, but I pulled over, turned the engine off, then turned it on again. The light stayed off. Fortunately, we weren’t far from a gas station. (That’s not always true in Alaska). The oil was a quart low. I was quite surprised because our car had only 10,000 miles on it. It made me wonder how much maintenance these rental cars received.

We got home about Noon Monday. Danita was tired and I was exhausted. I kept on falling asleep. We got everything squared away Monday afternoon and enjoyed a good night’s sleep last night. Everything is back to normal. This was an excellent vacation which we won’t soon forget.