Alaska Highway, Day 9: Eagle Trail, AK to Anchorage, AK

Today: ~300mi from Eagle Trail State Recreational Site, AK to Anchorage, AK

Approximate Route Map:

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Well, this was it: our final destination. Given the fact that I'd driven all of 30 miles the previous day, I broke the rotation and volunteered to take the morning shift. I also made this the only shift, since I wanted to close out in Anchorage the drive that I'd begun in San Francisco.

As you descend into the Anchorage area from the hills up north, you get the scenic vistas that you get on all the highways around here. Ho hum. Totally boring.

Yeah, this sucked

 A few hours of simply awful scenery later, we came upon the first real markers of civilization we'd seen in days. Whitehorse may have had multiple exits, but this was the first city that had proper suburbs since Seattle. Anchorage welcomed us,

Awww yeah.

Our very first target in Anchorage was the post office on Strawberry Rd (the only post office in Anchorage that actually answers their phone), the destination of our new California title for the Subaru. We knew by this point, through the miracles of Internet tracking, that something was waiting for us in Anchorage, but we had no idea whether it would be a title or just a piece of paper chiding us for not submitting Form 1295QS in triplicate and carved in stone.

Amazingly, it was the real deal. Somehow, we managed to beat the bureaucracy and get a brand-new title shipped to us, waiting in Alaska. This might have been the emotional high point of the trip, just because it was the one thing none of us was really confident in!

The most beautiful sheet of paper we'd ever seen.

After picking up the title, we headed over to our reserved hotel, the downtown Howard Johnson in Anchorage. Protip: don't stay at the downtown Howard Johnson in Anchorage. It's expensive, the stairways have a faint smell of urine, the Internet access hardly works, and if you request an extra towel it will never arrive. But, since we were only planning to stick around for a night, we decided to deal with it. First order of business: unpack, and document the state of the car at the end of a California-to-Alaska drive.

State: filthy.

Best way to sell a car, bar none.

 After unpacking, JT revised the Craigslist post (adding a phone number and reducing the price), and we headed out for lunch at the Glacier Brewhouse downtown. Lunch continued on the exotic meat theme with a reindeer hot dog. It was a pretty good hot dog.

After lunch, we decided that we wanted to move the car FAST, so we could get on with our trip and (most importantly) get out of Anchorage. While I napped, JT revised the price downwards again and Nathan started investigating places to get the car washed. Turns out a low price is really all you need - we got three calls in the space of an hour, one of whom didn't even care about a clean car. A quick showing later, we had a tentative deal. Not bad for a couple hours of work!

To celebrate, we went out for the first (and only) fancy dinner of the trip, at the Southside Bistro in Anchorage. We were certainly the worst-dressed table at the restaurant, but that didn't seem to faze the staff. The seafood was excellent and perfectly cooked; recommended.

Tomorrow: Anchorage, AK to Denali, AK