Thursday, June 12, 2014

The 15 Minute Plan...

June 11, 2014

We woke this morning to the makings of a

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beautiful day.  All that rain we had yesterday and last night left

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some fresh snow on the mountain tops.

We were just getting ready when Bob came knocking at the door.  Anyone for breakfast at McDonald's.  I had already fixed my cereal, but, Mark said he would go.  Bob said come on, Molly will be ready in about 15 minutes.  And, they were off.

While they were gone to breakfast, I was thinking about our plans for the day.  We had talked about doing a few things around Anchorage, but, I had the idea of driving down to Portage and Whittier in the car.  When the others returned from McDonalds, we begin to hash out a plan and in about 15 minutes, we had a totally new plan for the day...well, for at least part of the day.

We headed out to Mary's first thought, the

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Alaska Wild Berry Store, home of the world's largest

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chocolate fountain!

Of, course, it was right in the middle of a gift store...more shopping!

Rich decided he would just visit

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with the moose!  If you haven't guessed it by now, Rich is not a shopper, but, he is a good sport and lets us do all the shopping we want.

With our purchases in hand, we were off to the next stop.  Mark chose

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Earthquake Park.  This park commemorates the 1964 Earthquake that registered 9.2 and

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happened on Good Friday.

This

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showed some of the devastation from the quake.

After a walk through the park, we headed just across the road to

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Lake Hood and the Aviation Museum.  We toured the

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museum, saw

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vintage aircraft, and watched a couple of movies.

One was about the planes that fly to

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Glaciers and the other one was about WWII and the bases here in Alaska.

Before we left, we had a chance to see a few float planes

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come in for a landing.

Not a bad morning for a 15 minute plan, however, that was as far as our plan went.  So, over lunch, it took us only about 15 more minutes to work out the plan for the afternoon.  We decided to head downtown and do some real Alaskan gift shopping.

During lunch, we also discussed that we might stay in Anchorage another day and if so, we thought we would move from Camp Sam's Club to Camp Cabala's.  After our downtown shopping spree, we headed back to the rigs until time to move.

I begin to look at the plan for moving and for tomorrow, when I decided I needed to make a run into Sam's....be back in about 15 minutes, I told Mark.  And, when I arrived back to the rig, Molly was there and we started discussing our plans...and, in about 15 minutes we had completely rewritten everything that we had discussed earlier.  The new plan...pack up and move, but not to Camp Cabala's...we mean, move on down the road.

We spread the word and in about another 15 minutes we were ready to roll on towards Whittier.

What a beautiful

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evening drive.

We stopped at a

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at a pullout where we thought we might see some whales, but no luck.  However, we

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spotted some sheep on the

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opposite side of the road...way, way up on the ridge.

On down the road, we passed the

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train loaded with tourist.

And, now, we are parked for the night

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at a large turnout just out of Whittier.  And, once again, it took us about 15 minutes to decide on tomorrow's plan.  So, reservations are made and we are going on a 26 Glacier tour in Prince William Sound!

But, for now, good night from

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The Turnagain Arm.

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