Ship Creek Salmon Walk

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Road Trip Teri

                                                                                                                                                             May 15, 2012
                                                                                                                                                              
   
        Where can you find a world class salmon stream six blocks from a thriving city’s downtown? Put on your hiking shoes in Anchorage, Alaska, between mid-May and mid-October and head for Ship Creek. If you want to fish for king or silver salmon, rentals along the creek will set you up with gear. But walking from the Ship Creek Overlook Park to the Anchorage Small Boat Harbor Park lets you enjoy the action without having to figure out how you’re going to get that salmon converted from a splashing thrashing fish into smoked filets.

Early salmon fishermen, Ship Creek, Anchorage

        Allow at least an hour for the two-mile roundtrip walk that starts at the Ship Creek Overlook Park (302 East Whitney Road), across the creek from the Comfort Inn at 111 Ship Creek Avenue.

Waiting for dinner at Ship Creek

Walk on trails on either side of the creek (the south side is better maintained and safer) to the Bridge Seafood Company. If you’ve been using the narrower trail on the north side of the creek, cross on the bridge here to the south side because the trail ends and you would have to walk on a narrow shoulder of Whitney Road, keeping company with the semi-trailers. This is Anchorage’s busiest industrial area, with the railroad and the port facilities hosting dozens of semi-trailers and trains. Train whistles, rumbling trucks, screeching gulls mix with the breeze whispers and lapping waves. In the spring the spice of cottonwoods and birches mixes with saltwater scents.

Hiker on Ship Creek Trail

        The trail crosses North C Street – watch traffic. Continue on the other side along the unpaved trail above the creek banks, and walk under the railroad bridge where the trail may be a little muddy because you’re walking on the clay that forms the creek’s banks. Climb up the bank to Western Drive, and walk along the road’s shoulder about one-third of a mile. Keep an eye out for ducks, Canada geese, Arctic Terns, bald eagles, and gulls.

Anchorage Port from Small Boat Harbor

          At the small park beside the boat launching ramp, stand with your back to the city and the water and wilderness spread out in front of you, with little in the way of civilization between Cook Inlet and Fairbanks. Tugboats pull barges to sea on the outgoing tides; fighter jets and cargo carriers swoop in to land at Elmendorf Air Force base north of the port; planes take off from Anchorage International Airport to the west. Mountains shape the horizon with active volcanoes, Mt. Susitna, and the Alaska Range, the Talkeetnas, and the Chugach Mountains.

Launching, at Anchorage Small Boat Harbor

          Go back along Western Drive to Ocean Dock Road, and up the hill to downtown Anchorage where dozens of restaurants and bars provide a full range of eating and drinking – including fresh Alaska  salmon that you didn’t have to catch yourself.
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Anchorage in April: Five Adventures and Apres

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Road Trip Teri

 
April 17, 2012
 
       To a casual observer, April would have to be the cruelest month to arrive in Anchorage. It’s the season known as “breakup,” characterized by cars that all look like they’ve been in the mud-bog races, by piles of dirt-covered snow, and by puddles that could double as Olympic swimming pools. Anchorageites try to leave if they can, to avoid the frustration of not being able to start their gardens until late May, or their golf games until the ground dries out.
 
        But the fact is, there’s plenty to do in Alaska’s largest city and the areas around it. Here are five adventures, and how to finish them off in style.
 
∙ Take off from the world’s largest float plane lakes and  get a swan’s eye view of the Western Hemisphere’s highest mountain. Officially it’s Mount McKinley; to most Alaskans, it’s Denali, Athabascan for “The Great One.”  Check in at Rust’s Flying Service or half a dozen others, for one to three hour tours, and return to Lake Spenard. From there, dine at the nearby Millenium Hotel’s Flying Machine, the current incarnation of an old-time Alaskan restaurant with views of the planes at Lakepenard. They feature fresh seafood, prime rib, and local Alaskan vegetables year round.
 
∙ Tour the Alaska Zoo, to see the local moose, the brown and black bears waking up, the polar bears, eagles, porcupines, musk oxen, wolves, and lynx. Watch the seals and camels, tigers, and yaks. It’s one of the pleasantest places to walk in the city, with well-kept trails that wind through the twenty-five acres of native forest past the animals’ homes. After your close-up encounters with the zoo animals, dine at Bear Tooth [you can also take in second run and indie movies for low prices]  or Moose’s Tooth, with local pizza, Southwestern fare, and one of Alaska’s best known microbreweries on tap.
 
∙ Wander through the exhibits at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art which features a large new section that displays a world class collection of Alaska Native artifacts. On long-term loan from the Smithsonian, the baskets and boats, masks and tools returned to Alaska a few years ago. The collection is organized chronologically within each of Alaska’s five major Native groups. Elsewhere the museum offers a brand-new children’s science museum with enough hands-on activities to keep both adults and kids occupied for a couple of hours; dioramas showing Alaska’s history both Native and other; and Alaskan paintings, sculpture and other frequently changing shows. Take a break and explore the museum shop, or wine and dine at Muse, the in-house restaurant.
 
∙ Ski or snowboard or walk the trails at Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood, south of Anchorage about 45 minutes along one of America’s scenic byways. The Seward Highway runs alongside Turnagain Arm, with spectacular scenery – mountains, hanging glaciers, some of the world’s most dramatic tides, sheep, eagles, and the occasional moose. Alyeska offers six chairlifts, and there’s still plenty of excellent skiing in April. Enjoy the spa, and dine at one of several local restaurants, such as the Double Musky Inn, famous for creole cooking. Or take the tram to the top of the mountain and eat at the four-star Seven Glaciers restaurant.
 
∙ Explore downtown Anchorage. By mid-April, the reindeer sausage carts are back, selling hot grilled sandwiches on the corners of Fourth Avenue. The downtown streets are dry, the art galleries are open, and you may even see some of the local moose browsing on shrubbery (don’t feed them; do photograph at a reasonable distance). Start at the east end of town with a cup of exotic tea at Indigo, and walk west on Fourth or Fifth or Sixth Avenues – you’ll pass theaters (Cyrano’s), a major mall (with Nordstrom’s on Sixth Avenue), boutiques, galleries, a drinking chocolate shop (Modern Dwellers at 423 G Street between 4th and 5th), more than a dozen excellent restaurants (Club Paris, Sullivan’s, Sacks, Orso’s Glacier Brewhouse, Crush), coffee shops (Kaladi’s PAC, Side Street Espresso), the historic federal building (now the Alaska Public Lands Information Center). At the west end of town, walk north a block to Third and L Street, where a statue of Captain James Cook  stands in the Resolution Point park looking out over the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet. Across the water is Mt. Susitna (the Sleeping Lady), and the Alaska Range. The Port of Anchorage and the Elmendorf Air Force base to the northeast and the Anchorage International Airport to the west show the importance of the city as a transportation and defense center. You might see a volcano steaming to the west, or Mt. McKinley rising to the northeast. At the west end of town, if you haven’t succumbed to the temptations of one of the restaurants along the way is Simon and Seafort’s, with one of the city’s best combinations of dining and views. Or the restaurants in the Hotel Captain Cook offer a variety of dining possibilities. Both Simon’s and the Cook are good places for an after-dinner drink to wind up your discoveries of the joys of April in Anchorage.
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An American Woman in Jerusalem

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Road Trip Teri
 Here in the Old City of Jerusalem the honey-colored stone swells up into a domed cathedral. There it spreads out into plazas like wide sun-drenched pools. Limestone forms the living organism that is the streets, the walls of the buildings that merge one into the next along the street, the balconies that roof over the streets, and the tunnels lined with excavations twenty or thirty feet down showing the Roman streets of two thousand years earlier. Courtyards, paths and stairs open to the sun; awnings shade the row of men loungedin lawn chairs and smoking their midday hookahs from its glare.
      We came into the Old City by the Damascus Gate on a sunny April morning in 2010, leaving our Palestinian hotel just a few blocks away. Crammed into the one-third of a square mile that Suleiman the Magnificent enclosed in 1537 are the holy places of the religions that call Abraham their earthly father: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Isaiah said, “Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful abode” (33:20), but Jerusalem’s stones are scarred with the blows of the wars among the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians through the past 1,300 years.
     “This is the seventh station of the Cross,” called out the tour guide to his clump of pilgrims. In matching yellow baseball caps following the Via Dolorosa. We edged past them, brushed by men carrying trays of coffees balanced on yokes across their shoulders, avoided the eyes of beggars in corners, and arrived at the tunnel leading to the Western (Wailing) Wall and the Dome of the Rock. Fit, handsome young Israeli soldiers, male and female, guarded the entrance, searching bags and questioning all who arrived at the threshold. I came with a western woman’s expectation of independence and equal treatment, and so far found admirable equality – their guns were the same size, their uniforms identical.
      But once in the plaza, men hurried to their stretch of the Wailing Wall, about three-quarters of its length, and women moved to their section, covering their heads with scarves and hats as they went. From the men’s side, chants ebbed and flowed; from the women’s side, only quiet. On the men’s side, glass covered an opening that lets worshipers look below to the only piece of wall left from the original Temple, the house in which God resided on earth. The women  must never see this.
      I washed my hands and walked into a crowded stone-paved space surrounded by six-foot canvas walls. Women sat in chairs reading their prayers from books in rushed whispers. The sparrows sang louder. Men stood on chairs on their side of the curtains and peered giggling over into the women’s area; women looked away silently. I pushed my prayer written on a scrap of paper into as high a crevice in the wall as I could reach, and rejoined Jim in the plaza.
      “Let’s try the Muslims,” I said, and we made our way through a second set of security guards and up the walkway to the plaza that surrounded the Dome of the Rock. This spot remains the most sacred place in Judaism because Solomon’s Temple, built for Yahweh, stood on the Temple Mount where the Dome now rises. The stone from which Mohammed stepped as he was taken into heaven to join Allah is the top of the Temple Mount.
     The guard frowned at me and gestured at my arms, giving me to understand that the sleeves of my shirt were too short. A long-sleeved sweater placated him enough that he let us past with another scowl. Men washed their hands and feet and faces at faucets and fountains around the plaza, but because we were not allowed to pray, we thought it wrong to wash. At the edge of the plaza we could look east past the Golden Gate, through which each of the three religions believes that God/Allah will arrive at the Second Coming. No equality in this plaza either, although some say that Islam gives women many rights that are not theirs inJudaism or Christianity. The Muslim women here, as elsewhere in the city, wore black coats that covered their ankles, their wrists, and their necks, and wrapped their heads in scarves. Their freedom did not extend to their dress, nor their behavior in the public space.
      From there we made our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Many Christians believe that Christ was crucified, died and was buried on this site, and here rose from the dead. Today, six Christian sects have divided the church among themselves, and regularly engage in fisticuffs over acts by one perceived by others to be disrespectful. We passed a circular brass rack crowded with clumps of blazing candles stuffed there by supplicants desperate to have God see their prayers. It looked pagan, entirely unruly and enthusiastic. Greek Orthodox priests and monks, stern in black robes and clearing the spaces ahead of them with vigorous swings of their incense censors, marched chanting toward the Tomb. Here the women surged in waves, all races and costumes, alongside the lay men. The women have no more control here than at the Wailing Wall or the Dome of the Rock, but their voices shared in the collective murmur that rose and fell.
      We returned to the afternoon sunlight on the slanting plaza. The guide for pilgrim group #19 waved his sign to attract his yellow-hatted swarm. A woman sat down a few steps up from us, set a slender cigar in a holder, lit it, smoked. She wore linen shorts, sneakers, a sleeveless white tank top, all setting off her tan and expensive blonde hair. The antithesis of the women at the Wailing Wall, the women on the Temple Mount, the women crowded in the Church, she made her own statement. We murmured “Amen.”
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