Anchorage

A lot of people have asked what Anchorage is like. Frankly it is just like every other American city. I guess to the people who live there the prices are really expensive but I found them similar to prices in Cody, maybe a little more expensive. I'll be honest though, I didn't get to do much exploring. I was very busy while in Anchorage. I had to go to several days of training and tours of facilities. I also had to buy supplies. Yup, that's right, supplies. The people I had talked to in Sand Point STRONGLY urged me to buy food before I head out. One person even said "leave the clothes and bring the food". So on my "off" time I was shopping for food. This was far more complicated that I expected. I usually shop for about 1 week at a time. Although my mother will disagree because I frequently have expired food in my pantry. Not anymore!!!! At one point I panicked. It was Monday, I was leaving on Friday and I had bought nothing. So what does a person in panic mode do... she buys everything she sees. Not so bright. I ended up taking about half of it back. (the people at Costco were not very pleased with me).

There are only two way to get your purchases to the bush... mail or freighter. There are two ways to accomplish the shipping. You do it yourself or you do what is called a bush order. You go to Costco, Walmart or Fred Meyer and you buy your stuff, pay them a fee and they package and send your things. I did this with the stuff I bought at Walmart (as it was A LOT of stuff) but not for the Costco and Fred Meyer stuff. I chose to mail this stuff myself seeing as I had NO idea how to do the freighter part. The post office in Anchorage is open until midnight so you can bring your packages there. The post office has subsidized mail for bush communities in Alaska. You can ship a 70 pound package for about $20 but only if you do it in state. Problem was I didn't have a scale. So I packed up boxes and took them to the post office hoping they would be 70 pound. Nope not even close. My lightest one was 85 pound.

I should back up here and explain some of the things I purchased that needed to be shipped. I purchased at just Costco and Fred Meyer 50 pounds of bread flour, 30 pounds of sugar, 25 pounds of regular flour, 25 packages of Jello tapioca pudding, 10 cans of chicken, 8 84 count boxes of tampons, and 3 12 count packages of 32oz each cartons of shelf stable milk. (This is milk in a carton that can sit on your shelf for like 2 years and surprisingly enough actually tastes like real milk. I was truly shocked). So I was standing in line at the post office, on tax day, trying to mail these over weight packages. A very nice man helped me lift the very heavy containers (which are those big plastic bins. I now have like 10 of them and I have NO idea what I'm going to use them for!) up onto the tiny post office scale. Yup overweight... so I bought a box and the nice guy and I started to unload the bin. Which bin do you think it was that was overweight... yup you guessed right the one with the 8 boxes of tampon! At that moment I could have been mortified but instead I just thought... oh well I won't see these people again! I could hear the grumblings of the other people in line and the cursing my insanity for doing this on tax day. So I turned around and to the 20 people in line I said "I"m sorry everyone but I'm moving to the bush and I need to mail the stuff out". Immediately people started saying things like "do you have more thing to bring in?" "how can I help you" and "I have some extra tape if you need it". Yeah I like Alaska. People are really nice here.

In the end I shipped 10 bins and all arrived in mostly good shape. A box of milk (sounds weird to type) exploded and ruined my crasins (you know dried cranberrys). I was pretty bummed but that was it. I will always think of Anchorage as the place to get food. I'm sure it has many other great qualities and things to do and see. But to me it's just one big supermarket just waiting to take all of my money.