July 27-29 Anchorage

We headed for Anchorage today. The drive was beautiful, for we could now see all those spectacular mountains that we could only guess at through the smoke three weeks ago. The fireweed is spectacular. I’d read about fireweed, but it didn’t prepare me for the reality. Fireweed is everywhere there is a patch of land with nothing else growing on it. Fireweed along the road; fireweed just below the snow melt; fireweed in amongst the yellow-green of aspen and alders and the dark blue-green of the spruce; fireweed making bright magenta patches up the mountainsides. As the story goes, the fireweed blooms all summer long, and when the blossoms get to the top of the stalk, then the first snow is 6 weeks away, so that’s our calendar. Leave when the fireweed tops are blooming. We still have a way to go.













July 28
Chores day. I did loads of laundry, Ger washed the car, and we went to see Harry Potter. It was the perfect thing to do on a soggy day.

July 29
Ger did some long-distance work with one of his clients, and I’m sitting at the Starbucks in the Base Exchange playing computer. Tomorrow we head in the general direction of Valdez, but it’s almost 300 miles away (gasp!) so we’ll break the trip up into at least two parts.