Hello Anchorage
We arrived in Anchorage around 10:30 last night, in time to see a beautiful pink sunset reflecting on the mountains below us as we approached in the plane. It was finally dark by midnight, though the horizon still held a royal blue hue. I’ve been enjoying the lengthening days of spring, it isn’t dark until well after 8pm now in Seattle, and by the solstice it’ll extend until after 10pm, but this is still impressive!
The views around Anchorage are beautiful, snowy mountains and blue sea. Today we walked downtown and to the coast trail, where we took a short walk. Mike has homework he needs to attend to, so now we’re enjoying beers at a local microbrewery where he can work. I had a moment of worry about wasting the beautiful daylight, but remembered that we’ve got many hours left of that.
From our wandering of the town I’ve quickly boiled Anchorage down to flat, small, and full of fur, ivory(!), and other shops that Mike and I cannot (will not) enter. Visually, it’s a cute city, but I wouldn’t come here for the architecture.
Later today we will meet up with Sarah, and tomorrow afternoon probably head down to Seward and the Kenai Fjords and Exit Glacier.
May 13th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I would love to hear what the people in Anchorage & the rest of Alaska are like. How is modern life in Alaska? Is it crowded? Dirty? Multicultural? Materialist? Is Anchorage at all funky? I mean, do you see kids with facial tattoos or street musicians? Or it is just a financial/business center?
Being a kook, I have long found Alaska intriguing. It’s like a beacon of kookdom.
Can’t wait to hear more!
May 15th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Anchorage seems to be a cross between oil headquarters, fed buildings (our hotel was right by the FBI), and a tourist center. As Mike noted in the next post, the city is impeccably clean, and seemed quite empty, as we are here ahead of the other tourists. I haven’t come across many funky people in Anchorage yet, and Sarah I noted yesterday the seeming lack of any sort of arts scene. In general so far we’ve met a lot of fishermen and gay men. They don’t seem to be the same men, but you never know…
I’ll try to follow up later with a better picture of what folks are like here. For now I can definitely say that everyone we have met has been incredibly friendly, which is quite nice as an outsider.