Posts in the “alaska” category

If you’re ever in Alaska, adn.com has a nice list of twelve Anchorage-area hikes.

Every Friday during the summer months (mid-May to mid-August) in Palmer, Alaska they have a little party/celebration/gather called Friday Flings, which consist of local entertainment, food, Alaska grown and made products, and activities. They were one of my favorite things about living in Palmer, something to look forward to at the end of every week.

The First Annual “Great Alaska Music Festival” will be taking place in Palmer, Alaska, the town I lived in during 2010-2011. The population of Palmer is about 6,000 people, and it’s probably most noted for being the place where the Alaska State Fair is held every year.

Chris Robinson, former lead singer of The Black Crowes — who I first saw perform in a high school gym in Alabama — and now with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, talks about my two favorite states in an Alaskan newspaper.

The Anchorage Daily News has a nice story about a 78-year-old who climbed Denali, and the life lessons the reporter learned from this man and other elders.

A farmer plowing a field in Palmer, Alaska on May 20, 2015.

At 10:30 pm.

One summer morning back when I lived in Talkeetna, Alaska, I had to leave my little cabin at 5am to be at the Toyota dealer in Anchorage by 7am so they could try to figure out why my RAV4 kept filling up with water every time it rained. Since it was summer, the sunlight at 5am was pretty much the same as it was at noon, which was always cool.

About twenty seconds after driving down the main road out of town — actually there’s only one road in and out of town, so it’s hardly worth referring to it as the “main road” — I came across a woman in a white dress walking on the lane divider stripes in the middle of the road, in the same direction I was driving.

I was reminded of that morning when I heard the song Chevy Van by Sammy Johns just now.

A friendly black dog sleeping in the bar area of the Latitude 62, Talkeetna, Alaska.

Polar bears “dancing”. A postcard from Alaska.

I saw this story posted a few weeks ago. The polar bear didn’t eat the guy, so it’s cute. Original story at kbhr.co/0

After watching Meet John Doe last night, today my neighbor’s dog was barking all afternoon. Thinking my neighbor might be like the neighbor in the movie, when he came outside I went outside also and yelled over to him, “Are you hard of hearing?”

He yells back, “What?,” so now I’m thinking I’m on the right track, which leads me to yell even louder, “Are you deaf?

Well, things didn’t quite go like they did in the movie.

~ Diary note from March 25, 2011, Palmer, Alaska

When I first moved to Talkeetna, I sat down to sign the lease with my new landlord. The conversation went like this:

Her: So, why are you moving to Alaska ... hunter?

Me: No.

Fisherman?

No.

*pause*

Right-wing nut job?

No.

*pause*

You’re not here to write stories about the town for tv shows, like those Northern Exposure people, are you?

*she starts taking off her sweater*

Um ...

*which I eventually realize is so that she can breast-feed her baby while we’re talking*

... no.

So why are you here?

The postal code in Stewart, British Columbia, is “VOT 1WO,” which the locals tell me stands for Very Old Town, One Way Out.

It can be harder to ice skate in Alaska than you might expect. This is the ice in the Turnagain Arm area, which is south of Anchorage, on the way to Alyeska, Seward, and Homer. (There are some very nice places to ice skate, but this isn’t one of them.)

Every March I feel like moving back to Talkeetna, Alaska, and this year the feeling has started early. This is a photo of Denali from the rivers in Talkeetna. If I remember correctly, Denali is 90 miles away in this photo. (Denali is kind of a big deal.)

This is a view of the Denali mountain range, as seen from Talkeetna, Alaska. This video is just under a minute long, and I took it on September 28, 2007.

One thing that isn’t apparent in this particular video is one of the great things about Alaska: I was the only person on the “beach” in Talkeetna when I was shooting this.

I try to tell people that that’s one of the special things about Alaska. It’s not that it’s prettier than a lot of other places. Colorado is pretty, New Mexico is pretty, etc., but in those states it can be hard to find a place in nature where you can really be alone. In Alaska, especially in the shoulder seasons and off seasons, it’s easy to find some “alone with nature” time.

Denali, as seen from the rivers in Talkeetna, Alaska, in September, 2007.

So the woman who told me to “suck it up” when I complained about doing the laundry in the winter moved out of the apartment complex. Facta non verba, baby.

(I posted this on December 1, 2010, when I lived in an apartment in Wasilla, Alaska, and had a 75-yard outdoor commute to the laundry facility.)

With the Earth’s atmosphere getting warmer, NPR has an article, Is there a ticking time bomb under the Arctic? (The short story is that there’s twice as much carbon in the thawing permafrost as their is in the Earth’s atmosphere.)

The Republicans open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling, led by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. Image from this oilprice.com story.