A garbage dumpster in Seward, Alaska
My favorite garbage dumpster in Seward, Alaska: “Look for moose.”
My favorite garbage dumpster in Seward, Alaska: “Look for moose.”
January 5, 2011, Wasilla, Alaska: This is a photo of our parking lot, a half-inch or more of ice, and black gravel they’ll sweep up and re-use come March or April.
“Someone is always in the way.”
That was my predominant thought after living in Alaska, and then moving back to the Lower-48.
In Alaska you can go to a lot of places and find solitude, and when you go to the grocery store it isn’t crowded, but as soon as I came back to the Lower-48 I constantly found that someone was always in my way, standing in front of me, at the grocery store, at the post office, in the Rocky Mountain National Park, wherever.
Way back on December 31, 2010 I lived in Wasilla, Alaska, and planned on driving down to Seward to spend a few days around New Year’s there. But a bad ice storm and the inability to find the right size tire chains derailed my plans, and I ended up in Anchorage instead. But because of that, I learned that they have a great fireworks show in Anchorage on New Year’s Eve.
As I mentioned in my second Facebook post on that day, there’s an Alaska saying that goes, “There’s old pilots, and there’s bold pilots, but there ain’t no old and bold pilots.”
The local parks people have created the best outdoor ice skating arena I’ve ever seen here on Wasilla Lake, night lights and all.
~ a note from December 11, 2010
Many moons ago, I took a very long vacation and spent a lot of time driving around Alaska and Canada. When I stopped at a restaurant in a small town in Canada, I learned this story about Robin Williams and the move, Insomnia. (See my website, One Man’s Alaska, for more stories.)
So a cat in the state of Washington walks into a shipping container ..... then 2,500 miles and a week later, it shows up at a Home Depot in Kenai, Alaska. And thanks to social media, the owners were found and the cat got a free flight home.
The story is here at adn.com.
“Fainting does feel as if I’m practicing dying. Already I know how abruptly the world withdraws even as people call out your name, how darkness and confusion shutter your vision and bewildering images crowd your brainpan, how you cannot simply will yourself to return once you’ve entered that shadowy place.”
From this story about Sherry Simpson, “brilliant writer, beloved friend and mentor to a whole generation of Alaska writers, passed away unexpectedly earlier this month after a brief illness.”
If you’re going to have an obituary, “She changed my life” is a darned good one.
Here’s what the 10 a.m. sunrise looks like in Anchorage, Alaska on October 27th.
(While that picture is too dark to tell exactly where I was, I was at one of the two main hospitals in Anchorage that day for a medical procedure.)
This is a view of the Independence Mine area in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, from October, 2010.
Hatcher Pass, Alaska, October 20, 2010.
This may look like a bad roller coaster ride, but it’s part of the Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass, Alaska. It operated as early as 1897, but was used more in the early-to-mid 1900s.
Per this tweet, Anchorage, Alaska has had 110 thunderstorms in 105 years.
Enjoyed Cowboys and Aliens at Wasilla’s fancy new stadium seating movie theater. How strange to walk out of a theater and into a valley of fireweed surrounded by misty mountains.
(A Facebook post from Wasilla, Alaska, August 9, 2011.)
Every spring I think about moving back to Talkeetna, Alaska, and I just ran across this old photo of my car in front of the cabin I lived in.
What did the porcupine cross the road? I have no idea, but this photo is from the Anchorage Daily News Twitter feed.
I've lived in a lot of places in my life, some good, some bad. This is the rental unit I lived at in Palmer, Alaska, courtesy of Google Maps.
Generally this was a good place. My favorite part was that I could jump on my bicycle and go on a 20-mile bike ride without every having to be near a busy street.
When I lived in Palmer, Alaska I used to write my bicycle quite a bit, and I came across several different churches. This is a photo of the Missionary Baptist church in Palmer.
This is a simulated oil painting I created from a photo I took in Alaska. I don’t remember the exact location, but it’s on the road to Talkeetna, probably between Willow and Talkeetna.