Adventure Times Four

Sunday was full of things to do. The group at the ranch decided to stay another night and was able to experience more of the rural Alaskan life. They were up there for the pig butchering, among other things, and really enjoyed their break from the city.

Back in Anchorage, we made a trip to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, the Living History Farms of Alaskan culture. While there, we were able to see housing types for the different cultural groups, artifacts and animal skins each would use, and learn more about the people from each region. After touring around the "villages" we watched ceremonial song and dance by native Alaskans. The whole experience was really neat and everyone enjoyed it.

In the afternoon, the Anchorage group found a couple more adventures. We went for a hike at Thunderbird Falls. The hike wasn't too intense (after the initial hill!) and had some awesome views of the waterfall and surrounding mountains. There was a trail that went right up to the base of the falls that we took which ended up being so cool!

After our hike we thought we would go find a local ice cream place to try. However, google maps failed us in this endeavor as the first two places we tried didn't exist and the third took us to an ice cream distribution center. Giving up on a local place, we found the cold stone in town. Instead of going straight for the ice cream though we took a detour to a pizza place across the street. It was kind of sketchy so hopefully the cook knew what he was doing! Finally we got our ice cream and went back to the hotel ready to fall in bed.

Pictures: mountain view on the hike

Totem pole at the heritage center

Thunderbird falls