Anchored down in Anchorage

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post. That doesn't mean we haven't been traveling. Just I got lazy. Hubby and I are now retired so hope to do as much traveling as possible. So where to start? Alaska was not somewhere that immediately came into my head but Brother in Law wanted to see bears to celebrate his 60th birthday.  COVID got in the way but here we are at last. 

We arrived in Anchorage after an 8 hour flight from New York, 3,000 miles and a 4 hour time difference and we are still in the U.S. (OK Canada did squeeze in between). Anchorage has a strange feel to it. It is very open and spread out. It does not feel as if you are in a town. So what did we do on our day there? We left the town and went to the Alaska Native Heritage Centre. Here we saw some amazing young men demonstrating the "games" played by native Alaskans to develop strength and balance needed to hunt. This involved various ways of jumping. From a standing jump, to a sort of triple jump and vertical  jumps while aiming to hit a ball suspended from a frame. 

There was also a dance demonstration with women of all ages dancing while the men drummed and sang. 

There are reproductions of houses from the various tribes. Most seemed to be underground or covered with earth, which makes sense when you think how cold it gets here. The guide was a native woman who spoke about her philosophy and how the native people were treated by the government  (yes, as bad as you imagine).

The bones are the jaw bones of a Bowhead whale. 

Lunch was in a brewhouse which was very lively and the food was good. 

The others did a trolly bus tour which took in a park showing the effects of the 1964 earthquake. Unfortunately, I started to feel a bit unwell so missed this.