Factories, galleries and gift shops of Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska, with a population of just over 300,000
was the largest city we visited on our Northern adventure. We had an overnight stay at an RV park in the
city and then visited some tourist attractions on the way out of town.
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| The Ulu Factory in Anchorage, Alaska |
The Ulu Factory was an interesting visit. The ulu tool is an all-purpose Inuit knife
used for many different things. The
natives used it for skinning and cleaning animals but it was also used for
trimming blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo as well as for preparing
food. They were originally built with
antlers handle and slate for the cutting edge.
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| Ulu Factory Tour Bus |
Today’s ulu has changed and mainly made with wood and steel. The most common use these days would be for
cooking purposes and a must have for many kitchens. The tour bus was outside after bringing several
for a tour at the factory; it was a ride we didn’t take but shows the interest
that is there for the Ulu Factory.
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| Alaska Wild Berry Products of Anchorage |
Our next stop in Anchorage was the Alaska Wild Berry
Products. They have a large selection of
hand-crafted jams and jellies, chocolates, smoked salmon and halibut and……
reindeer sausage. Now, that is definitely something I am not
wanting to eat, names like Rudolph and Bambi come to mind, but we did get some
jams and chocolates and enjoyed them.
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| Polar Bear |
Rarely would we go into any tourist attraction on our trip
without bumping into some kind of stuffed animals. One could get up close and personal with this
one, he was not behind a glass wall as many were and he was a very big guy, I wouldn't want to meet him any other way!
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| Turnagain Gallery on Seward Highway, Alaska |
We continued following Hwy 1 south heading to our next
destination of Hope, AK. We made a stop
to see some of the carvings at the Turnagain Gallery at Bird Creek on the
Seward Highway. We wandered around their
gift store where they had several different kinds of wood carvings from
furniture to wall hangings and animals that range from small to life size.
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| Carving of 2015 |
Our visit was just a couple of
days after the 2
nd annual Alaska Cup International Carving
Competition had completed so we missed seeing some amazing work. I have
included a link to see what was done at the first annual Alaska Cup
competition,
click here and see the incredible work from 2014.
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| Second prize winner of 2015 |
I do not know who the artist was
who crafted this but this second prize winner was one of eight professional
carvers expected to compete in 2015. They
came from as far away as Germany and Japan and also included one of our own
British Columbia artists, Rod Brown. His
work shown in 2014 video is beautiful.
