Anchorage: Retrospection and final evaluation

 

We always planned on visiting Alaska, but were a little uncertain about moving there. We thought it might be a place best seen in a couple weeks or from the security of a cruise ship, not a place to commit to for three months. Thankfully we chose to commit!

The difference between visiting Alaska and living there is similar to the difference between camp-site camping and backpacking. Sure, metaphorically we didn't hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. We didn't live there through a winter or visit any remote native villages. We're not residents or experts, but I feel like we got a really good idea of the area. 

Summer in Alaska...

Anchorage: Glaciers, reindeer, and hiking at midnight. The best and worst of our three month stay in Alaska.

Time to move on! Our stay, once stretching out before us as three whole long months of opportunity has flown into and through us, settling somewhere in our minds as disjointed memories of camping trips, grueling hikes, road-trips, and syrupy beverages from countless colorful coffee shacks between Homer and Denali.

I often get time shock at the end of our stays looking at how quickly the time has gone. It's not because we've run out of time and missed out on doing what we planned. It's because we do so much and the time flies. I'm ready to go. The days are already getting shorter. It's raining a lot. We kayaked and dog sledded and took a ride on the Alaskan railroad. We saw waterfalls, glaciers, and moose. We saw a whale in Seward, drove as far south as Homer on the Kenai Peninsula and as far north as Denali National Park. We biked the Tony Knowles Trail and scrambled over loose scree to O'Malley Peak. We hiked to a remote lake and canoed in the rain. There is a lifetime of exploration here, but I'm

Anchorage: First week of living in Alaska and the new apartment

We've only been in Alaska a few days and nothing too eventful has happened, but I want to write before the initial culture shock wears off. Despite being a part of the U.S., Alaska is different enough that it's a little like visiting another country for the first time. Here are some things we've noticed:

1) If you ever fly to Alaska, reserve a window seat. The plane took off from Chicago around sunset and chased the sun through and over pink clouds the entire six-hour flight to Anchorage where it finally got dark shortly after arrival. Much of the trip I looked down on clouds and the snowy peaks poking through them. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was a cloud and what was a mountain. Huge gorges full of ice and snow between mountains looked like rivers but ran to nowhere. I found out later some of these gorges run deeper than the grand canyon and many of these mountains are taller than any we'd seen in Colorado or California.

2) Anchorage is in the middle of nowhere. That nowhere is beautiful mountains and wilderness but it's so sparsely populated here that it's unnerving. Alaska makes up almost 18% of the U.S. land mass and hardly anyone lives on most of it. Anchorage contains 41% of the state's population (second in single city concentration to only NY) and even in Anchorage, it feels sparse!

     Alaska's 2nd and 3rd biggest cities, Fairbanks and Juneau, are over 6 and 21 hours away, respectively. The fourth biggest city in Alaska has only around 9,000 people. To put this in continental U.S. terms, imagine that you live in New York City and have to drive to Pittsburg PA or Savannah, GA through mountain and wilderness to get to the nearest decent sized cities and these cities are