A Market, A Walk, and A Restaurant

Good morning, my friends. It was another lovely day in Anchorage yesterday. Rain arrived late in the afternoon, but we enjoyed the sunny parts of the day. Our first stop was the Anchorage Farmers Market. It was a small market, but it's always interesting to see what's available in different parts of the country.

The names on these different sauerkrauts made them interesting and tempting. At $15 per jar, I passed, but I still enjoyed the labels.

As we were leaving, we noticed this community garden. There were some vegetables growing there, but mainly it was a flower garden.

Dahlias tend to be fall bloomers, and so I was surprised to find this pretty so early in the season. I believe this is the same "Firefighter" dahlia I have at home.

Then there were these little cuties. The flowers are tiny. My phone tells me this is Sweet Alyssum.

And these. My phone tells me this is Nicotiana.

These next ones are Dionysia Janthina.

From there, we headed to The Tony Knowles Coastal Trailhead. Along the way we crossed this Pride bridge with pretty hanging flower baskets.

It was just a few minutes to the trailhead.

This was a super easy trail. We crossed a bridge, and then hit pavement. We only walked a mile before turning around and heading back, but the trail was paved all the way.

Here's a little map. It's a little hard to see in this image. We began our walk to the right of the red square at the top.. We were standing at the red "You Are Here" rectangle to the left when I took this picture.

The trail parallels the Alaska Railroad. We walked under the railroad through this tunnel.

Okay, now we've gone over the danger about the mud flats. This is how you could die today, so be careful. No funny business.

Looking out across the water and to the right, we could see mountains.

There were more mountains straight ahead.

And barely visible mountains to the left. I believe this might be the Kenai Range we were seeing from Homer.

Benches along the way memorialized certain people. This one made me wonder about the story.

Looking out, we saw a pair of sandhill cranes.

Gulls are ubiquitous in this area. 

We hear gulls squawking all day long at the RV park.

These two were out for a swim.

And, of course, the Canada geese. Show me a body of water, and I'll show you some Canada geese.

We saw more blooming fireweed.

At home, we call this next one "vetch."

Our shadow selves wanted to sit for a while. We waited while they rested.

Looking out, we could see ships leaving the harbor.

And airplanes coming in for a landing.

Continuing on our walk, we surmise that big white pile to be sea salt.

Completing our walk, we headed to 49th State Brewing for lunch. This was a busy place.

Seating was first come, first served, and we were lucky to get one of the few remaining tables.

Mike ordered some kind of beer. I had a raspberry cream soda. So refreshing.

For lunch, Mike ordered the smoked prime rib melt. He ate half and brought half home.

Mine was this Chicken Yum Yum Bowl. And it lived up to its name. That's a mildly spicy peanut dressing on the side. The chicken was breaded and deep fried, giving it the nicest little crunch.

From there, we headed back to the camper and lazed around for the remainder of the afternoon.

So we awakened to gray skies this morning. It looks like rain. It will probably rain even more tomorrow. We're hoping to get out for another hike today, but we'll wait and see what the weather holds for us. Right now it's time for our Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. Everyone else (two and four-legged people alike) is asleep. I might spend some more time reading before anything else can happen. It's looking like it could be a slow morning followed by a slow day.