I just picked up an Anchorage layover that gives me most of the day free on Saturday May 10th. Anyone that isn't going to be at Valdez going to be around? Would love to meet up for lunch or something!

(I can't do drinks, flying the all-nighter back to SLC that night, dammit - but it wouldn't stop you
I was planning on trying to make it out to Lake Hood at any rate...

Let me know!

If you're flying into ANC (actually PANC) you'll already be at Lake Hood

The tower controllers for LHD (PALH) stand in one side of the tower cab, the Anchorage controllers stand in the other side of the same cab.

Take a walk around the Lake, by all means.

Then drive across town and tour Merrill Field.

Lots to see in and around.

MTV

mtv wrote:If you're flying into ANC (actually PANC) you'll already be at Lake Hood

The tower controllers for LHD (PALH) stand in one side of the tower cab, the Anchorage controllers stand in the other side of the same cab.

Take a walk around the Lake, by all means.

Then drive across town and tour Merrill Field.

Lots to see in and around.

MTV

Thanks, MTV - we get in late tomorrow night and head straight to the hotel, then I have all day on Saturday. We stay downtown, so Lake Hood is "getting back out to the airport". I could sleep in a sleeping bag under a Beaver wing and be in heaven, though!

When I was really junior on the 757/767 in NYC, I always got ANC layovers in the dead of winter. I'm hoping to see more of it in the summer!

Are you staying at the Captain Cook then? You'll actually pass across Anchorage's first runway to get downtown. The downtown park strip has a reason it's long and narrow. (Forgot to point that out to you, Zane buddy). Sometime in the last decade they used it one last time- lowered the flagpole and departed some classy old bird off of it for old times sake. Get a meal in the Crows Nest and you should have a pretty good view of traffic entering the pattern at Merrill field. Better yet grab a bite on the deck at the Millenium, or just take a picnic to the grass spot across the lake-end from there.
I'm not going to be in town myself, but I hope you get great wx and have a great layover.

denalipilot wrote:Are you staying at the Captain Cook then? You'll actually pass across Anchorage's first runway to get downtown. The downtown park strip has a reason it's long and narrow. (Forgot to point that out to you, Zane buddy). Sometime in the last decade they used it one last time- lowered the flagpole and departed some classy old bird off of it for old times sake. Get a meal in the Crows Nest and you should have a pretty good view of traffic entering the pattern at Merrill field. Better yet grab a bite on the deck at the Millenium, or just take a picnic to the grass spot across the lake-end from there.
I'm not going to be in town myself, but I hope you get great wx and have a great layover.

Yes - we've been staying there for years. Thanks for the ideas!

My company puts us at the Hilton so I walk to Merrill and tour Stoddards and try to figure what impulse buy I can put in my flight bag and not get it taken away by the TSA. My last PANC layover I had four days so I rented a car and drove to Talkeetna. I've walked the area surrounding Lake Hood many times too. Hard to get a bush plane fix in the short layovers. I love anchorage layovers.

denalipilot wrote:Are you staying at the Captain Cook then? You'll actually pass across Anchorage's first runway to get downtown. The downtown park strip has a reason it's long and narrow. (Forgot to point that out to you, Zane buddy). Sometime in the last decade they used it one last time- lowered the flagpole and departed some classy old bird off of it for old times sake.

Actually, that was a re-enactment of Noel Wien's first flight in AK, when he moved his recently assembled Standard biplane from ANC to Fairbanks. That constituted the beginning of commercial aviation in Alaska.

The latter day participants in the celebration were Noel Wien's two sons.....Merrill and Richard, and was flown in a restored Stearman.

And a fellow who posts on here happens to be Merrill's son.

While Carl Ben Eielson conducted the first flights in Alaska, Noel Wien was the guy who put the airplane to work in AK, and built aviation in the Territory into a viable business.

MTV

Thanks for the refresher, MTV. I'm dismayed I forgot those details, because I used to know them, and worse, because Merrill and his wife actually visited us around the time of that flight.