Anchorage

I'm not sure what happened. But it did. I arrived in Anchorage shortly after noon today. It's a pretty nice day by Anchorage standards. Clear and 60. I started looking around at streets and buildings and the rugged mountains that sit on the east side of the city. It was a 3 hour and 15 minute trip up from Seattle --over Vancouver Island, past Ketchikan, Juneau, and Yakutat. Staring out at some of the world's largest glaciers -- one the size of the entire state of Rhode Island. And water -- miles and miles of cold, blue Pacific water. The sun came up at 04:27am this morning here and will not set until 11:29pm tonight....making the day 19 hours and 2 minutes long today. In fact, the sky will not actually get "dark" tonight. Only sort of twilight. And the longest day of the year isn't quite here yet. People go sort of crazy-happy here in the summertime. Here's the weather for today in Anchorage. It's a land filled with miles and miles of nothingness....no people, no roads, no nothing.... except for moose, bears, fish, and bald eagles.

Oh yeah, back to what happened. I sort of got sentimental. I missed my husband. And my pooch. We used to live here. For a short time in late 1998 when we began working for our company. We lived with four other people in an apartment near the airport. The snow fell and got deep and cold. We rode the #7 bus around town because we didn't have a car. We flew to places like Barrow (the northern most point in the US) and Prudhoe Bay ("Drill Baby, Drill!). We had only been together a year or so and then found ourselves living in the Great Land. It was a good time for us. A time of newness, adventure, and happiness.

I haven't really been back up here too much since left in early 1999. And so, when I do end up here, it sort of brings up memories of our early years together, the adventurous spirit that we had at that time, and the fresh beginnings of our relationship and a new job. Combine all of that with being in our nation's largest and northern-most state, and you've got a good combination for a little sentimentality. And that's where you'll find me today. In Anchorage, thinking about my hubby and the times that we shared here in Alaska, and missing my home and my doggy. I leave at midnight tonight for an all-night flight south to Portland. It will not actually be completely dark during the whole flight southward because we're at just about the longest day of the year. I land at 05:25am tomorrow morning and will jump in the car and race home to lay kisses on my hubby's lips and my pooch's tummy -- not positive about the exact order. They both like that.

A Few More Facts About Anchorage: Anchorage boasts the world's second largest ocean tides...around 40 feet at times! At also sits within spitting distance of Mt. Redoubt....which has erupted numerous times over the last few months. A bit further up the road is Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park at 20,320 feet. I could see both of these mountains as we landed at Ted Steven's International Airport today (man, I hate saying that name). Oh, and remember Sarah Palin's Bridge to Nowhere? It is here.....well, it isn't here....since it hasn't been built. But the water over which they want to build it is outside my hotel room window. When we lived here, we lived across the street from the Lake Hood Seaplane Base....one of the world's busiest. We used to take long walks around the lake and look at all of the hundreds of airplanes floating in the water there.