Alaska: Anchorage and going Home (Days 15-16)

Click on the day you wish to view:

Day 15 (Sept 10): Exploring Anchorage
Day 16 (Sept 11): Going Home

Day 15: Breakfast at Gwennie's, Jacket Fiasco Amplified, Dinner at Wendy's

Breakfast at Gwennie's

With a weird day in store for us, we decided to have a filling breakfast at Gwennie's to start things out. We had to return our rental car at 10am, so we made it to Gwennie's at 8:30am for breakfast. It was, once again, delicious! Mark had the reindeer sausage with eggs and potatoes, and I went with a delicious omelet with ham, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and avocado in it, which was served with potatoes as well.

Jacket Fiasco, continued

The day in general, as I said before, was just weird, and we spent a lot of it waiting around. In an effort to get Mark's lost jacket back, we ended up needing to wait in our hotel room until around 3pm for a call from the charter bus to let us know they were at the airport. We munched on snacks, but weren't really hungry for lunch. When it got to be 2:30pm, we were getting a little concerned, so we started walking the 2 miles to the airport to make sure we were waiting there when the bus arrived. Of course, it never did, and when we called the hotel to make sure it got on the bus (this would be our 3rd conversation about this stupid jacket), they finally told us that they had forgotten to send it with the charter bus, and it was, indeed, still at the hotel. What a headache!! We finally convinced them to send the jacket in the mail, but there was 4 hours of our vacation we wouldn't get back.

The Rest of the Evening

We ended up pretty tired from the whole fiasco with the jacket and crashed at the hotel for another hour or so before walking down to Wendy's to have some chili for dinner. I had been craving chili the last half of the trip, and sadly, it didn't squelch my hunger for it, as it wasn't nearly as good as my chili, but it was what it was. We watched TV the rest of the night and got to bed early.

We wish we had a little more time to enjoy the sights in Anchorage, but it is what it is. It's tough to get around town without a car, and quite frankly, we were pretty wiped out from our previous 15 days. We'll just have to explore the city more the next time we're there.

Day 16: Heading Home

We were luckily able to sleep in a bit on our last morning in Alaska, as our flight wasn't until 11am. We checked out and took the airport shuttle from our hotel around 9am and got everything checked and in order once we arrived.

It was a little sobering as shortly after we arrived, they announced a moment of silence for the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, after which we watched some of the coverage from 10 years ago on the TVs while enjoying some breakfast at McDonald's.

We made it to our gate with an hour to spare and killed some time visiting with some guys from Minnesota heading back home after a big Alaskan hunting vacation. We all compared wildlife-sighting stories, and they told us about the big bull they got while they were up there. It was fun to reminisce about our trip with others who had also just experienced Alaska for the first (or second, or third) times while on our trip.

We had an excellent time on our Alaskan vacation and would love to go on a return trip at some point in the future. :) It helps when you have such a wonderful travel companion who tends to be on your same interest (and energy) level.

Alaska: Denali National Park to Anchorage (Day 14 - 9/9)

Click the links below to jump to the part of the post:

Leaving Denali National Park
Coastal International Inn
The Jacket Fiasco
Exploring Anchorage
Romano's Italian Restaurant

Leaving Denali National Park

Our last morning in the Denali National Park area, we were up early to get things packed back up and checked out of the hotel around 10am. We stopped to pick up some breakfast before heading out of town, and Mark was so kind as to attempt to help a girl who had a horribly flat tire to no avail: She had to call in some buddies with better tools. It just goes to show how sweet my hubby is to be a thousand miles from home and STILL willing to try to help a damsel in distress :)

While he was helping her, I grabbed another Vanilla Chai Latte and a cinnamon roll from my favorite place:

After doing all he could, Mark finally settled on a Subway breakfast sandwich, and then we headed out on our long drive back to Anchorage for our final 2 days in Alaska.

It was a LONG drive that seemed even longer than the way out was, but after a couple short pit-stops, including lunch at McDonald's in Wasilla, we finally made it back to Anchorage and across town to find our hotel for the next 2 evenings: The Coastal International Inn.

Coastal International Inn

It was, as expected, pretty dumpy, but we weren't particular, and didn't want to spend a fortune, as the other hotels in the area were going for around $200/night! It also had an airport shuttle, and we had an early morning flight on the 11th and were dropping off our rental car on the 10th.

The Jacket Fiasco

When we were a good hour out of Denali National Park, we realized that I had put Mark's really nice Columbia jacket in the closet at the last hotel we were staying at. Of course, after freaking out about the idea of an additional 2 hours on the road, we finally found reception and called the hotel and made arrangements for the jacket to make its way on down to Anchorage on a charter bus coming from that location the next day. Or so we thought...but that's a story for Day 15 lol

Exploring Anchorage

After checking in and getting settled for the next couple days, we hopped in the car and headed downtown, as we were planning on going to dinner at the highly-recommended Glacier Brewhouse. It was CRAZY downtown, which we found out it was because they had this huge Taste of Mardi Gras event going on down there (which was $30pp, and by the time we got there, all the food vendors were already gone, so it made no sense), which was why it was so packed downtown.

We were starving at that point, it was almost 8pm, and finding parking was horrific down there, so Mark finally just dropped me off at the door so I could put our names in and went to find a parking spot further away. Unfortunately it was going to be a 90 MINUTE wait, so I called him back right away and told him to come pick me up and we would have to find something else.

Romano's Italian Restaurant

At that point, we were so hungry and tired of driving around, so we finally settled on Romano's Italian Restaurant, which wasn't downtown, nor was it one of the "widely acclaimed" restaurants in Anchorage, but the food was good, service was good, and food came quickly.

We split the Penne Primavera, which was delicious, and just enough to split without leftovers and feeling satisfied.