Rental Car Return Day

It's Labor Day. I've got the day off. My first day of work is tomorrow. Since I knew I'd have to work all day, I wanted to go ahead and turn in the rental car today. I called up the Alaskan Gift and Espresso Shop at the airport. They were open, so I told them I'd be bringing the car back.

First, Samara and I drove over to the post office. Apparently they don't let you check your PO Box when they're closed. Sure, they could leave it open and just close the retail side, but no. It's all closed. Then we got a bit of cash at the bank, just in case we were able to get a cab from the airport. It was a little rainy, but the main plan was to walk back to town.

We drove on out to the airport, and dropped the car off. We perused the reindeer and salmon jerky, but didn't buy any. There didn't seem to be any cabs at the airport, so we took off walking. We took a few pictures of the "terminals" as we left.


The PenAir terminal is where we flew in. The Alaskan Gift and Espresso Shop is upstairs, past the TSA offices.


Next door is the terminal for Freshwater Adventures. They've got some float planes that they fly around Alaska.


There are lots of small planes around the Dillingham airport.


If you need to park for a long time, here's the gravel lot where you leave your car.


Welcome to Dillingham!


Here are the boat yards.


This is a tidal sluice, or so we were told. Clearly the tide is out right now.


Here's a float plane (with wheels as well) coming in for a landing. As we walked away from the airport, we looped around the runway. The road actually has a nice wide asphalt sidewalk running alongside it. So you can walk from the airport all the way into town safely.



We didn't make it very much farther before a nice lady (a native, I presume, wearing a jacket that looked like she worked at the airport) stopped and picked us up. She wasn't going all the way into town, but she took us to the top of Windmill Hill. That meant less of an uphill walk for us.

Almost as soon as we got out of her SUV, someone else stopped. It was 82-year-old John Bennett in his beat-up Subaru. He was headed into town, and gave us a ride across the flats and all the way to the N&N Market. His goal is to outlive his father, who died at 87. His stories were punctuated by pointing, which meant he wasn't really steering his car. That doesn't matter so much on the wide, lightly-traveled roads of Dillingham. We definitely appreciated the ride.

We bought some more paper plates, some beef, minced garlic and a Pepsi at the N&N. From there, it's a relatively short walk to our house. Funny enough, John Bennett stopped by us again right before we got to our street, thinking we needed more of a ride. Really nice guy.

I finally got a good picture of some wildlife. It was a crow on top of the telephone poll next to our apartment.


Then it flew off.


And now we're back home, watching marathons on television.