Friday, July 2, 2010

Coastal Trail

There are hundreds of miles of trails winding their way through Anchorage, the most famous of which is the 11-mile Coastal Trail from Kincaid Park to Downtown. I undertook this route with friends from South Africa, but without our trusty navigator, Daniel. At first we thought we were the only ones smart enough to walk the trail downhill, but we soon realized that everyone else was actually doing a roundtrip! Unfortunately, we had also added a very unnecessary five-mile detour to our walk before we even started, so our Coastal Trail was much more challenging than it needed to be.


The walk was beautiful, however, and we saw lots of exciting wildlife. A marvelous moose bull actually blocked our path for a little while, causing us to back up a bit in case he decided to charge. We also came across a couple of moose cows, some squirrels, and lots of birds, including a downy woodpecker and a family of rare sandhill cranes.



Towards the end of the trail, we stumbled upon our first Anchorage mansions, hugging the coastline. We also finally figured out where all the postcard photos of the city skyline are taken from!

And lastly, I quite enjoyed the signs advertising the multi-use Coastal Trail. Perhaps Daniel and I will try it this way next time!


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