day 6 - headed home

 our last day in alaska was a long one.  

after a lovely meal of breakfast quesadillas, mashed potatoes & fruit, we packed up for our 10am check-out.

the mountains did not bother to bid us farewell.

with the skies still cloudy & 50°, i was unsure if it would be worthwhile to sightsee much along the drive back to the airport.  our b&b host suggested we drive through hatcher pass as it was only a slight detour back to anchorage.  it took about an hour to make it from where the road was less improved/unimproved to the hatcher pass lodge, where there were facilities and what looked to be like "civilization" - thankfully daddy was the driver for this leg of our adventure.

the higher we got, the more snow we saw up close.

we stopped to get a closer look at a frozen lake.  i can only imagine how beautiful this would have been if the sun were shining and the sky was blue.

big sister was happy with her front row view!

there were some steep drop offs and hairpin turns!!

every once in a while we would see critters running across the road ahead.  turns out they were arctic ground squirrels.

after the excitement of hatcher pass, we were hungry for lunch.  we stopped at the downtown anchorage location of 49th state brewing.  having a long wait for a table, we circled around downtown until we found the "greetings from alaska" mural as a fun photo op.

the restaurant was very crowded but had good service.  we were in no hurry knowing our next stop was the airport.  daddy ordered halibut n chips, i tried the crab cake sandwich, and the girls each got mac n cheese.

by 3:30pm, we were returning our rental car even though our flight was not until 8:40pm.

bye bye, mini van!

little did we know that the ticket counter where we had to check our bags would not open until 2 hours prior to our flight, i.e. 6:00pm or so.....therefore, we bought a deck of cards and sat around playing and waiting to check bags before going through security.  at least we were not the only people waiting for the counter to open....what a silly situation for an airport.  we had no issues boarding our flight.  the girls and i were in one row and daddy was about 4 rows back.  next stop - texas!

today's stats:

129 miles
8,270 steps