Back to Anchorage for Five Things

[canyonwalker]

Alaska Travelog #6
Anchorage - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 4pm

After hiking Barbara Falls and Thunderbird Falls this morning we turned the car around and headed back south— getting back on track with our original plan for the day of driving to Seward, some 125 miles from Anchorage, and stop for a few hikes along the way— except that we were 30 miles on the opposite of Anchorage. And when we got back to Anchorage we deemed it time to stop for lunch... and shopping. With the ridiculously long days up here, who cares if we get in to Seward at 10pm? It'll still be daytime!

Here are Five Things:

• Back in Anchorage our first order of business was getting lunch. It was already 2:30pm, and we were hungry. We considered whether to simply nosh on protein bars and save time not stopping at a restaurant but again, night comes so late, why rush?


• We chose to eat at a Golden Corral. It's a very Americana buffet restaurant, two things that we rarely eat. But we figured that other choices in Alaska may not be much better. I mean, lots of Mexican restaurants popped up when we did a search... but given that, here, "South of the border" is 1,500 miles of Canada, is Mexican food really that good? Plus, the last time we ate at a Golden Corral was 5 years ago (IIRC) so it was a bit novel for us.


• We made a quick stop at REI, the outdoor sporting goods store. That new pair of hiking boots I've mentioned in my past few blogs haven't been fitting quite right. I wanted to see if a pair one size smaller would fit better and, if so, exchange them. Unfortunately the otherwise well-stocked REI store in Anchorage didn't have the model of boot I bought. I think it's being phased out... which is a shame, because I've now bought this boot at least 4 times because I like it so much.


• Hawk wanted to stop by a lapidary shop for some gem hunting. Ordinarily we'd postpone this to the end of the trip and do it only if time permits but here, again, daytime lasts forever so why not do it while the store's open.


• While Hawk was in the store I got Apple CarPlay working in our rental car. I mention that because it had been vexing us all morning that we could not get the car's infotainment system to connect our phones. It kept giving us the error message, "Maximum of 6 phones connected, please delete one first." Even after we deleted all the old connection profiles, it kept giving us that error. I searched online for help and found plenty of Reddit posts describing the same problem. The solutions offered ranged from as simple as "Delete the profiles," (Did it several times) to "Turn the car off and back on again," (Did that several times also) to, "I had to take mine to the dealer to fix it." 🙄 But one seemingly weird tip that actually worked was, "Turn the car off, open the driver's door for at least 10 seconds, then close it and start the car again." Holy moly, the secret door trick worked! Now we have Apple Maps nav for the rest of our trip. 🤣

Now it's time to get going with the other half of our day. There's only 7½ hours of daylight left!

Comments

[some_other_dave]

I hope you remember to delete your phone pairing/info from the car before you return it! It would creep me out knowing that at least some of my information is sitting in a rental car somewhere...

[canyonwalker]

I agree, the prospect of leaving contact lists and downloaded messages on a rental car's infotainment system is concerning. I always mean to delete it before I return the rental... but I often forget. I'm less bothered by it when the connection is Apple CarPlay. With that, AFAICT, the car is not downloading info to its infotainment system, it's just displaying information projected by the phone.