Alaska Cruise: In Anchorage

I kept a lot of notes on the Blackberry during our terrific visit to Alaska and Anchorage but, thanks to my decision to go into full vacation mode, I didn't wind up doing real-time posts to TLRM. So instead, I'm going to finish up several look-back posts sharing our impressions of our destinations. Some Alaska photos are already up on my Facebook page (see earlier post), with Vancouver photos to follow later, and I plan to upload some short videos to YouTube and link them into these posts.

* Flew in to Anchorage on a Monday night, landing around 11:15 p.m. The sky was still as bright as dusk back home. They have 19 hours of daylight here just after the solstice - but only about six hours during the shortest days of the year... yikes! The abnormally long summer days and winter nights are probably not insignificant to the development of the Alaskan psyche. Pleasant late June temperatures around 60, which is what we encountered during most of the cruise.

* We stayed at the Hotel Captain Cook downtown. Our comment card was signed by "Walter Hickel, Jr., President," who I assume is the son of the Nixon-era Interior Secretary? It appears to be a waystation for cruise types at this time of year. It has a good location, right between 4th and 5th Streets, the two main shopping and entertainment streets downtown. After the fact, we heard from folks that "there's nowhere else to stay in Anchorage." Staff told us that the Captain Cook has a big spring and fall convention business (the Alaska Bar Assn. had an event there during our stay), and a lot of retail (a well-stocked Patagonia store to get you ready for the outback, a women's shop called Rosita's on 4th into which Ann disappeared but didn't do too much damage, which gave me time to write this, and some decent-looking crafts shops). Clean, well-maintained, and pleasant, and the lingonberry pancakes with reindeer sausage were tasty.

*Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center (6th and C) is a good place to kill most of an overcast day. Permanent exhibits include (i) the Alaska Gallery, a very well-done history of the territory beginning 10,000 years ago with some first-rate dioramas of dwellings ranging from the earliest natives to the prospectors of the early 20th century; and (ii) the Art of the North galleries, with over a century of predominantly landscape works chiefly by Anglo artists including the Brooklyn transplant (and Alaska favorite) Sydney Laurence. The current museum space is new, bright, and handsome, and a significant expansion next year will bring at least two new galleries. The Museum Cafe known as Muse is operated by the Marx Brothers, whose dinner-only Marx Brothers Cafe is located in one of the city's earliest cottages (circa 1917).

*We had a cocktail on the rooftop of the Captain Cook, where they serve more than 40 Scotches, and a pleasant dinner at Sacks Cafe, recommended in the June edition of Cooking Light Magazine (and therefore at the top of Ann's list).

*Verdict: A pleasant stopover, but certainly not a destination. The next morning, we boarded the Alaska Railway for a 4 1/2 hour scenic ride to Seward, from which our ship would embark.

*UPDATE: Meant to flag a nice little retail discovery we made, and one I had mentioned briefly on Facebook -- the Musk Ox Producers Cooperative runs a shop on H Street in Anchorage where they sell scarves, hats, earwarmers, and other products that capitalize on the heat-retention qualities of qiviut, the extremely lightweight underbelly wool of the musk ox. The wool is never dyed because it would harm the fibers, so you need to like greyish brown (though they have some products in an 80% qiviut/20% silk blend). Ann is in love with her new earwarmer. The Coop also runs a retail website.