Interlude : Anchorage

“Our 1999 Downtown Walking Map will help you find the many worthwhile sights and points of interest in the area.”

Anchorage tourist brochure

“Over there, if you could see it, you would see Mount McKinley.”
We dutifully looked in the direction that the city guide was pointing. Not only couldn’t we see Mount McKinley, America's highest peak, we couldn’t even locate the horizon in the haze. He was apologetic.
“All the forest fires have lowered the air quality,” he told us “That’s why everything is so dull and difficult to see.”
In fairness he was doing his best. After four days in Anchorage I had come to the conclusion that while it had many merits - it was clean, attractively maintained with streets full of floral displays, comfortable and homely - what it wasn’t was interesting. No matter how you look at it Anchorage is essentially quite dull. The guide struggled to make it sound fascinating but it's a losing battle when you are giving a tour that includes not only the Alaska Railroad Depot but the Oomingmak Musk Ox Producers Co-op. The only fact that struck me as vaguely interesting was that the oldest building in town was only eight years older than my father. A good indication of just how mundane the city is, is the nomenclature adopted for the streets in the downtown area. Those running East to West have been imaginatively called 1st Avenue to 8th Avenue which is I suppose no worse than New York and those running from North to South go by the distinctive A Street to L Street. The imagination needed to dream that up beggars belief, though of course this is only something that would strike an Englishman, given our own decidedly quirky approach to street and town naming.

I’d arrived in Anchorage a few days ago in what was technically the early hours of 1st July but felt more like a continuation of 30th June. It was about one a.m. and bright daylight. I always find the disruption of the cycle of day and night at these latitudes disorienting. No matter how tired my body gets my brain goes on insisting that it’s mid-afternoon.
When I’d eventually retrieved my luggage and found my way out to the guest house that I’d booked via the Internet - my first attempt at such a hi-tech way of doing things - I collapsed into bed in the mercifully dark and shuttered room oblivious of my surroundings.

I woke to find myself face to face with a bear, close enough to kiss it on the nose. Comprehension came slowly. It wasn’t alone, there were other bears there, lots of them. Unlike the memories of Lake Tahoe that swam to the surface of my mind there was something distinctly odd about this encounter. For a start the bear in question was dressed as Spock from Star Trek, blue uniform, tricorder and all. From the corner of my eye I could see a second one with angel wings and a halo and a third disguised as a rabbit, its pink bunny ears tied on with string.
“Aha,” I thought “So that’s why it’s called the Teddy Bear House Bed and Breakfast”.
I climbed out of bed (disturbing another bear with my foot as I did so - it started to snore softly) and looked around as I dressed. The room was full of them, easily several hundred. The hall outside, the other rooms, even the kitchen were similarly occupied.
The owners of the Teddy Bear House are Marge and Ed Quick and the bears belong to Marge who has been collecting them for many years. It’s a massive collection. How massive only became apparent as I walked about the place. There were small bears, large bears and absolutely enormous bears, pilots, soldiers, lady bears and gentlemen bears and little baby bears. In the living room a Christmas Tree (in July!) was decorated with bear ornaments and baubles. The cuteness factor crept up to overload as I discovered bear light switch surrounds, fridge magnets, toilet-roll holders, cups and plates and coat hangers. Outside the front door was a bear shoe scraper. It should have been, I kicked myself for even thinking it, unbearable. It wasn’t though. It was so extreme that it took on a glorious eccentricity. It was like being in a grand museum of Teddy Bears. There were, Marge assured me as I tucked into her excellent breakfast, many more bears in storage as there was literally nowhere left in the house to display them.

The guest house was some way out from downtown Anchorage but the bus ride was pleasant and comfortable and as I rode in to town I realised that I liked the city a lot. Downtown though it didn’t take long to discover that much as I appreciated the look and feel of it there wasn’t actually a great deal to do there. In the visitors centre I made a list. There was the art gallery - always a good way to spend an hour or two, the Alaska Experience - a forty minute surround screen presentation about the state, Humpy’s a recommended alehouse and...

...well that seemed to be about it without hiring a car and driving out of the city. No matter how I added it up I couldn’t stretch it to three days worth of entertainment. There was of course a coastal trail, the Tony Knowles trail which I felt probably hadn’t been named after the snooker player although I couldn’t be certain. I intended to spend a day walking along it. The rest of it I’d have to make up as I went along.

The art gallery, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, proved to be quite diverting with a good selection of modern pieces incorporating traditional Inuit designs, although the Sydney Lawrence gallery, dedicated to Alaska’s most famous painter of landscapes could have used just a few less views of the currently invisible Mount McKinley. The Alaskan experience was probably also quite entertaining but as the central heating in the place was turned up full I fell asleep and only woke up as people started tripping over my legs on the way out.
After my tasty but overpriced lunch and my tastier and even more overpriced three pints of beer in Humpy’s (which it has to be said regardless of cost is a heaven sent establishment after four weeks of drinking what passes for beer in most of America), I wandered the streets randomly looking for something to do. There wasn’t much. I paid a brief visit to a shop called Wolfsong of Alaska, a non-profit making organisation devoted to educating people about wolves, briefer visits to a couple of book shops and had a stroll around the shopping mall before giving up for the day.

With the attractions of downtown exhausted my plan for the next day was to take that coastal walk. This too turned out to have the safe blandness that dogs the city. The walk is for its entire length a tarmacced path along which not only walkers but cyclists, roller-bladers, and a group of rather strange looking people on what seemed to be wheeled skis, were making their way. Contrary to the hyperbole of the Anchorage tourist board (“the spectacular panorama of Cook Inlet”, “a biking, running and walking paradise”, “a magnificent...trail”) it is actually an unchallenging and relatively dull stroll albeit through a pleasant enough area that manages to be pretty without ever being engaging.

Two days and I was already longing to join my new group and be gone. What was it, I wondered, about nice places that is so fundamentally unappealing?