Ahhh...Anchorage....How Long Your Day and Short Your Night!

How to sleep when it's sunset at 11:45 p.m. and sunrise at 3:47 a.m.???  Doesn't really happen for me.  Even my very own towel animal doesn't help!  Here's the towel dog....nope.  For sure the towel dinosaur didn't work.  The whale shark was impressive...but still, no real shut eye.

I have the sneaking suspicion that it will be my own sweet (if bouncy) pups that will reintroduce a good night's sleep.

For now, there is adventuring to do in the form of exploring places we have never been.  Anchorage, you're up next!

After 07:00 stretching and exercise class in the gym, we watch as our ship makes yet another smooth landing.  

A heaving line is....heaved ashore with a monkey's fist on the end.  Ok, it might have been a ball.  One miss, and then one successful toss.

The dock workers grab the line and pull in the mammoth docking line.  It takes three guys on the dock and one driving a fork lift tractor, to which they attach the line, and the tractor does most of the pulling.

Thus, the line goes around the cleat.  

Today is rent a car with your cruise buddies day....and see what we shall see!

We are off along the shore of Turnagain Arm, so named during the early exploration days, as sailing ships trying to find the sought after Northwest Passage found this to be a dead end and they had to "turn again" and go back toward what became Anchorage.  

Cloudy, grey Alaska day.  But wait!  It is sunny and warm in Anchorage?!

Hum. 

We stop at the advertised overlook for beluga whales.  No whales do we see.

We stop at the advertised pullout for mountain sheep.  No sheep do we see.

What's this??  Suddenly we are flying by road signage....and now we are in a lane for a one way tunnel...that serves both trains and vehicles....and through the toll booth we go with one minute left on the on the every hour passage to....Whittier, Alaska.  Who knew?!

The tunnel is several miles long, driving over railroad tracks, emerging into Whittier.  I can't say downtown Whitter as there is no town, really.  This deep water port became a stretegic base during WWII as the only way in by road was the one way tunnel and the other was into the very protected harbor via a narrow channel.  This became an important U.S. Army base until the 1950's.  

We have lunch at the Whittier Inn, and the waitress encourages us to wait another hour for the next tunnel transit time and actually look around.  She tells us of a waterfall, a small museum and a road overlook.  We make the first two.

Then it's back through the tunnel, and a stop at the Portabe Glacier information center and finally the Wildlife Conservation Center.

We finally are seeing some of Alaska's wildlife...

Moose!

Elk!

Musk-Oxen!

Eagles....

And.....BEARS!  Big, Brown Bears!

Also known as Grizzly!

The famous Grizzly claws....and wouldn't you know...it's feeding time.  Everyone (all 3) wait right by the area where the men appear with buckets of huge pieces of cow, and toss it over the rail.

Hum.  Feeding time....all thoughts seem to turn toward the good ship Maasdam and our dinner that awaits us there....and that comfy bed.

All Aboard is at 9:30 p.m., but we find ourselves on the ramp by 6:30!  

Tomorrow morning we will awake cruising into Homer...another unexplored Alaska town....surrounded by mountains and sea.