What to do on a Rainy Day

Good morning, my friends. Well, it rained most of the day yesterday. We made good on our threat to visit a couple of chocolate shops in town. Our first stop was Aurora Chocolate. We almost missed this since it was inside a building with huge signs identifying it as a Century 21 real estate office. There was one small sign at the tippy top of the building that gave away the chocolate shop inside. Even after finding the building, it was hard to find the door that opened to some stairs leading to the second floor. Then...just this humble front door.

Inside, as a PBS reviewer put it, "edible art." Look at these chocolate turtles, made to look like actual turtles.

Here are the candies Aurora Chocolates is named for, inspired by the Northern Lights. 

These little chocolates on a stick. They looked like Fruit Loops cereal, threaded onto a skewer and then dipped in chocolate.

And chocolate-covered pretzels.

We each picked two of the candies, and then were told we could have two free samples. We just added those to the box. Mike chose the four in the upper right...each one with come coffee flavor included. I chose the salted caramel at the bottom, and the tiny lemon tarts on the left. 

Next, we headed to this much larger enterprise. It was a chocolate shop, yes. But it was also a large gift shop with all sorts of Alaska-made products. This was the front door:

Posted on the door...this sign:

Okay. Well, this I gotta see. And there it was right inside the front door. It might be hard to see this, but the chocolate "fall" starts at those copper buckets at the top, each one pouring into the one below until it reaches the "waterfall" at the bottom.

Here's the accompanying sign.

I have just one question: Why? On the other hand, it is one way to get into the Guinness book, I suppose. Maybe my own attempts have been wrong-headed. 

We didn't buy anything here because, again, things were outrageously expensive. I loved all these Christmas ornaments, though. If we still put up a Christmas tree, I might have been tempted.

Mainly, I liked the labels and "flavor" names of things:

These were socks in a can. And, again...why?

They did sell chocolates here too. We thought we already had enough candy from the first stop.

It was the usual stuff one expects to see in a place like this.

Except for this. Alaska's largest chocolate bar. "Largest" seems to be the theme here. It was the size of a baking sheet, and a bargain at $90! Yeah...we passed again.

From there we headed to the grocery store. We saw this embankment of fireweed along the way. We hadn't seen any fireweed at all until we arrived in Anchorage. Now we're seeing it everywhere.

We finished our grocery shopping, and put things away. After that, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. Smitty helped with that. He held onto the loose strands of floss for me.

We tried to get him out for a walk, but this is a noisy and scary place. He wasn’t willing even to get off the step of the camper. Sadie was very concerned for his welfare…or maybe she just wondered when the treats of valor/appeasement would be disbursed.

Whatever she was thinking, she kept an eagle eye on the door, hoping Smitty would return soon.

So we head to Palmer today. We have a couple of outings planned for that area. The RV parks closer to Palmer were full, and so we're staying farther away than we'd hoped. We have a couple of day trips planned to see a couple of different sites, and that means more driving than we'd like. Oh well. It is what it is. If nobody dies, then we'll declare our visit a success. (We set the bar low. It saves us unnecessary disappointment.)

Our drive today is short. We're hanging out in Anchorage until we're forced out at 11:00 a.m. It's only about an hour-long drive, and check-in at the park near Palmer isn't until 3:00. Most places will let you check in early, but we'll probably do something to kill some time before we arrive.

So pack up your stuff. We're heading down the road again. We still have a couple of weeks of sight-seeing left on our trip, but we'll be heading for home in a few weeks.