Okay, yeah, so it’s sort of pretty here
posted in Uncategorized |It was a long plane ride. A long two plane rides. We got to Small Town, Alaska, at about 10 p.m. Arizona time. We went to bed an hour later, and it was still bright outside (though overcast).
Our temporary quarters are cute. If I were living by myself, it would be perfect. There’s a tiny living area/kitchenette, plus a bedroom with a bathroom. The bathroom doesn’t have a door…
The main problem–aside from the teeny tininess–is that the only internet access is via dialup.
This is the in-law apartment in L’s house. L’s husband is a retired airline pilot; he and a bunch of friends purchased land around the edge of a lake, and all of them have private airplanes that they can either land on the grassy airstrip or on the lake. So you turn off the main road onto the driveway, and there’s this huge STOP sign that informs any driver that airplanes may land on the grassy airstrip crossing the driveway unexpectedly. L’s son works for Alaska Airlines, and is quite cute and very interesting. L herself was baking bread today, and brought us a loaf of bread.
Today I saw fifty kazillion craggy mountains, a glacier or two, rushing rivers (especially glacial rivers, which are an interesting iron grey color due to all the loess, silt from the glacier–they actually look like rushing rivers of cement). We went to the farmer’s market, which featured a singer singing all of OmegaDad’s favorite songs by his favorite singers; we ran into a lady with a child adopted from China (alas, she lives in Seattle, and was merely visiting her folks). The people and the community feeling was very similar to the feeling from Small Mountain University Town!
We went to a reindeer farm and fed caribou.
We went to Don’s Trout House for dinner; Don’s Trout House doesn’t serve trout, but does serve steak. OmegaDad claims that we need to go to Nick’s Steak House to get trout.
Oh, yeah, and the sun sort of came out for a while, which was nice.
So, yeah, it’s kind of pretty here.
But the really interesting thing is that Alaskans must have serious caffeine dependencies. On the 15-minute drive from the teeny-tiny apartment into downtown Small Town, there were at least 15 latte shacks.
Just how can a pair of towns with maybe a total of 20,000 people support that many latte shacks? Color me puzzled.
More later. Somewhere along the line, I’ll post pics and respond to comments, and maybe read other people’s posts. But this dial-up access is for the birds. Not only is it slow, it blocks the phone line…
Tomorrow we start looking at houses. Believe me when I say we’re highly motivated.
