Mood weather ramblings

Today is "mood weather" day, as Leo might call it: a drizzle most of the day, temperature right around 55 degrees.

Garbage - a three mile drive and a buck a bag

There is no trash service here in Talkeetna. You just throw what you have in the car and drive it to one of two dropoff spots, with one at each end of the spur road. The closest one to me is three miles down the road. Turns out it's $1 per bag to drop off. You just drive in, tell 'em how many bags you have, then drive to the dumpster and throw them out.

Sciatic nerve, celebration of life

Arghhh. For the second night in a row it looks like I'm going to get less than three hours of sleep. This doesn't have anything to do with Alaska, but has everything to do with a sciatic nerve.

I've done something to trigger a problem with the sciatic nerve in my right leg. It doesn't "hurt" so much as it is incredibly uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to move the leg one way or another, like the nerve is swollen or somehow shortened, and sleep is next-to-impossible. I'm currently alternating hot and cold packs, taking a ton of Aleeve, and fidgeting like a crazy person.

Cottonwood in the air

I woke up this morning here in Talkeetna, Alaska to find my car covered in, well, something.

The squirrel and me

I'll post a picture of my little squirrel friend here shortly, but in the meantime the story is that we're trying to get to a point where we trust each other.

I put out some Cheerioes for him every day, and he does his part in eating them all. Some days he only comes by once, other days, like yesterday, he'll come by four times. When there aren't any Cheerios out on the rail he comes up to the window to see if I'm sitting there working. If he sees me he proceeds to throw a fit, doing everything but pounding on the window with his little paw and calling me names.

The Denali range during the fires

While doing a little cleaning on the computer I realized I never posted a couple of pictures taken one and two days before the smoke from the fires hit town. The clear, bright picture is the normal view from the top of the hill looking into Talkeetna, and the much darker picture is from the night before I learned about the fires.

Here's the before picture:

Alaska fires update

At least two major fires continue to burn in Alaska. The really big fire is in Caribou Hills, and area in the Kenai Peninsula. That fire is currently over 50,000 acres in size (78 square miles, larger than the city of Louisville, Kentucky, my former home), and has destroyed more than 30 residential homes. It continues to burn out of control.

The fire closer to me -- about 35 miles to the southwest -- is at Trapper Lake. It's currently stopped at 9,700 acres, as cool, damp weather has helped to slow it down.

Sitemap

This web site consists of two main sections:

• The blog
• The wiki

You get to the blog automatically just by coming to the web site, i.e., it's the first page you see when you come to OneMansAlaska.com. The wiki has dedicated pages for all the major Alaska destinations, including places like

Alaska forest fires still burning

There are two major forest fires burning in Alaska right now, one in Caribou Hills (20,000 acres, 300 miles to the southest), and one in Trapper Lake (5,000 acres, about 35 miles southeast of Talkeetna).

I was sleeping in bed most of the morning, thinking the nice dark was from the clouds, as we had thunderstorms for several hours last night. I laid there thinking "How nice it is to enjoy the dark for a little while, I'm so glad it's overcast and raining", then rolled over, and the clock showed 10:30 a.m.

Fires raging in Alaska

As I work on this blog on June 21, 2007, I noticed that something was very wrong outside. Today is the longest day of the year, and it's supposed to be sunny today, but the light from the sun is a yellowish orange color. Is there an eclipse?

No, there isn't. There are fires raging nearby.

Since I haven't caught up on the blog-writing I won't ruin that suspense by saying where in Alaska I am, other than to say that it's 4:26 p.m. on June 21, and the clouds from the fire are making it darker here than it's been in a while.

Alaska moose safety

I've been lucky enough to see plenty of moose since I moved to Alaska a few weeks ago. I came within 100 feet of one of them when I was riding my bike. I was on the way home when I saw this cute (but huge) moose in the middle of the road, and as I approached he just stood his ground, with the hair standing up on his back -- wait, standing its ground, hair standing on it's back?! Those are bad signs, right???

Alaska bear safety

Bears are so cute, kinda makes you want to walk right up and pet them ... don't do that! From the comfort of my own car I've seen over 100 bears on the sides of the road, and from a car I can tell you bears react one of three ways:

About

My name is Alvin Alexander, and this site is about my new life in Alaska. It's also about Alaska itself -- the destinations, scenery, wildlife, adventures, and the people -- all the wonderful things you'll see when you take your vacation to this wonderful place. I've been to Alaska twice before on vacations, but this year, 2007, I moved here. I left home -- Louisville, Kentucky -- on May 8th, and took plenty of time traveling up here, driving through the United States (the Lower 48) and Canada.

The Talkeetna gas station

Ahh, a beautiful morning, I think I'll drive up to the gas station the neighbor told me about and get some coffee and donuts ... what the heck???

Wow, they take this "gas" thing seriously. No attendant, no building, only takes credit cards, no donuts, no coffee. This may take some getting used to.

DSL working, town, airport

I just got the DSL internet access working in my Talkeetna cabin. The local phone company seems to be another monopoly, as they charge for bandwidth in excess of 10GB per month, something unheard of in Louisville. Their pricing information can be found here.

Post-September living

A friend asked where I'm going to live after September. The truth is that I don't know, I'm just going to play it by ear.

Alaska rentals - No medium-term rental market

The biggest surprise during my search for a medium-term rental property in Alaska is that there isn't a significant market for people willing to rent homes for 4-5 months at a time. There is a short-term market for 1-2 week renters, and the obvious year's lease market, but I assumed that with the long, cold, dark winter here there would be a market to rent homes just for the summer, but there isn't.

Moving into my cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska

Well, it's adios Anchorage adios fast food restaurants, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, book stores, grocery stores, and hello Talkeetna. Today is move-in day.

I'll be driving up to Talkeetna shortly (a 2.5-3 hour drive), after one last stack of sourdough pancakes at the Downtown Deli.

On the way up I'm going to stop at the WalMart in Eagle River to pick up a few more items, but as I think about it, there isn't much room in the car, so it's just going to be very basic items like laundry detergent, soda, hmm, and a bag of Oreo cookies :).

Anchorage, Alaska pictures: WildRide Sled Dog Show

Anchorage, Alaska pictures: With my housing situation now under control I decided to relax and check out a new show in Anchorage called the "WildRide Sled Dog Show" today. This show is put on by the Seavey family, a famous named in the Iditarod circle.

The Seavey's have always had a great sled dog show in Seward they call the Ididaride, but this WildRide show in Anchorage is new this year.

Preliminary Talkeetna info

After telling a friend about my decision to live in Talkeetna he sent this email message:

The Dancing Bears Wild Alaskan Grill doesn't sound too bad:

"Enjoy authentic Alaskan food on our burlwood deck. Noted for the only place in Alaska serving fiddlehead ferns and the best salmon from Barrow to Juneau. Also halibut, chowder, reindeer, musk ox, beer, wine and more. Open daily."