We were shuttled from the airport to our hotel downtown yesterday by a nice local who was pleasantly surprised to meet some tourists with plans slightly outside the “normal tourist fare.” We rode in his Toyota Highlander and told him about our plan to rent a camper and drive a loop through Wrangell-St. Elias and Denali after doing some camping in Seward and he asked if we were going to stick to the road system or go off roading. He said, in Alaska, you can pretty much just pull off the road and camp anywhere. He mentioned the Knik River about 30 minutes north of Anchorage and somewhere near Girdwood to the south.
When we arrived at the hotel around midnight, the sky was still bright and it felt like late afternoon on a slightly overcast day. Unfortunately during check-in at the front desk, we were informed that they didn’t have any available rooms with two queen beds. After some discussion, they found a vacated room next to an open room and hastily cleaned it and gave us the two rooms for the night. We got comped a nice breakfast for our troubles.
This morning we learned that we had to move into a double room since they were fully booked and could let us stay in the two rooms another night. They moved our bags and comped us dinner.
We spent the day walking part of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail (about a mile) and then looping back through the city with a stop at the Alaska Public Lands Information Center, some lunch at AK Alchemist, and coffee and a donut at Kobuk. All in all maybe 4 miles of walking. The weather has been nice – sunny and warm. The hotel is also nice, despite the room mixup. We’re staying at The Wildbirch Hotel. We leave early tomorrow, so now it’s time for some downtime at the hotel. I’ve got Ready Player One queued up on the Kindle.
