Thursday Thirteen.

Thirteen Things About Living in Anchorage.

1. Coldest summer EVER. What a stupid year to move to Anchorage. And from Tucson. Somebody up there obviously has a sadistic sense of humor. Hottest summers of my life to coldest summer of my life. I really don't do things by half.
2. Water. WATER! WATERWATERWATER!!!!!!!!!!!! I love water. I lived in the Sonoran Desert for almost four years, where there is a shocking LACK of WATER! I grew up in Minnesota -- spent lots of time in lakes in the summertime. Went to Bemidji State University which is on a huge lake. Lived on both the East and West Coasts of the US, and loved going to the Atlantic and Pacific beaches. I love the Pacific Ocean. And now, I again live where I can go walk along the (rocky) beach and watch the tide come in.
3. Salmon, Halibut, Trout, and Cod. Mark and Tess and Thor have been fishing. I found out I really do like fish, and Mark and I are really good at cooking it -- we have had baked, beer batter, broiled, and pan fried fish this summer.
   
4. Barnes and Noble. Yeah, we so did a store locator search before we decided to move to Anchorage. Unfortunately, B&N is surrounded by
   
5. ONE WAY streets. Four lane wide one way streets. Four lane wide one way streets where I am usually in the far right lane while B&N or the movie theater is on the left side of the road. I am starting to get a map of Anchorage in my head, but I still don't know exactly how to get to Barnes and Noble.
6. TARGET! WOOT! Target is building a store here, and hooray it is like ten minutes from my house! The Target in Alaska page is in my bookmark toolbar, so I can check how many more days until it opens -- FORTY FIVE! Yay!
7. Anchorage is very green, as in there are lots of trees and woods and streams and parks. When you drive around Anchorage, you drive past lots of trees and wooded areas, which is why we have...
8. Bears. In Anchorage. They did a study, and best guess estimate is that there are at least 30 or 40 brown bear (grizzlies, that is) who live in or have as part of their territory Anchorage. And 300 or 400 black bears too.
   
9. Which means you have to be careful with your garbage and dog food and can't feed birds and stuff. The day we moved in, there was a black bear kill in the woods across the street from our house -- a bear had killed a moose and they were dealing with it.
10. Moose. We have seen lots of moose this summer. They seem to like to feed in the early evenings in the area around the PX and the commissary and we see them there regularly. We also saw a moose and her calf crossing the road, very unconcerned about the cars, and wandering down a stream. Moose are huge and gangly and really fun to see.
11. It really is harder here. We have to get studded tires for winter driving. The internet and phone service and cable are not completely reliable -- there are little momentary glitches all the time. Gas costs $4.31 a gallon, down from a high of $4.39. Stuff you take for granted you cannot take for granted here.
    
12. But it's a lot like the rest of America. We have McDonald's and Taco Bell and Costco and Carl's Junior and Old Navy and Nordstrom's and lots of other chain stores. The malls are indistinguishable from malls across the country. Except there might be a moose walking through the parking lot...
13. It's beautiful. The Chugach Mountains are right out there, although this morning it's so cloudy I can't currently see them. (And I still haven't seen Denali, the highest mountain in the US.) There is a glacier not far from Anchorage, the Portage Glacier, on a gorgeous lake.

(I can't find any photos of moose right now. I will have to post those later...)

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