Chamber of Commerce Day

Dad always used to call those perfect Seattle days - temps in the 70s, not a cloud in the sky - "Chamber of Commerce Day," like, go out and grab the city's staff photographer, it's time to take pictures for the annual "Seattle" calendar.  Well, Thursday was Anchorage's official "Chamber of Commerce Day."  This is the day that tourists (and newbies like me) look around town and go, holy crap, this city is amazing and I want to live here forever.  Now, since it's currently dumping buckets and about 60 degrees outside (of course, because it's Saturday), I felt like this post would give me a reminder of how great my new city is and how much I really do love it here.  Also, I can tell you a bit about my new fabulous metropolitan lifestyle working downtown.  It's a lot nicer than the north Salem industrial park.

First off, I work in the second tallest building in town, just a few feet shorter than the Conoco Phillips building (the tallest building, obviously), which is a block away on the same street.  Pretty much all state workers work in this building, except for Andy, who works closer to the water.  It's nice to know that I have the same view as the guys getting paid by all the oil money.  Then again, as a state employee, that's basically where my paycheck comes from too.

Two tall buildings - mine is the silvery one on the right.  Also, I didn't take this picture, I grabbed it off google images. 

I work on the 2nd to the top floor and am on the side of the building that faces south and west.  I look toward our house and have an excellent view of the mountains and also the airport which I actually kind of like looking at.

Looking to the south

Looking to the west - the airport is off in the distance

To take those pictures, I stood up from my desk and walked three feet.  I don't have this view directly because I have my computer monitors in the way, but when I stand up to stretch or lean over to ask my coworkers 10,000 questions a day about my job, this is what I see.  It's pretty nice, especially since I've never really had a view before at work.

One of the things I like best about where I work is the location.  Not only am I roughly four blocks from Andy so we can meet for lunch (a luxury we never really had except for when I worked at Willamette), but Downtown Anchorage is really pretty, especially in the summer.  This park is almost halfway between my office and Andy's:

My building from the park

The park is, like the rest of downtown, FULL of flowers right now.  We see people out watering and tending to the flowers early in the morning every day, keeping all the beds perfect for the tourists, who, with an average age of about 70, really appreciate gardening (like Andy and me).  Also, you never really see them working during the day - it's kind of like Disneyland...the landscaping is perfect but you never see anyone doing the hard work.  We talked to a maintenance lady the other day and she said that they have over 1200 hanging baskets alone in about a 5 block radius and the staff takes care of all of them in addition to the planted beds.  It's a HUGE job,  but look how pretty!

Dahlias! My favorite! They don't winter over in AK, so I wonder if the city workers dig them up every year?!

The rest of town all looks like this - every vacant little bit of earth is just chock full of plants.  At lunch they also have concerts in the various parks and tons of food vendors out cooking and selling reindeer sausage and other goodies.  I love that Anchorage has such a vibrant downtown, and on a day like Thursday, when it was 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, it really was a "Chamber of Commerce Day." All the cruise-goers were loving it, and so was I.

Kansas City Recap

Big news this week - I survived my first business trip!  I know I just started my job, but my new boss really wanted me to attend corporation finance training.  All the states' securities examiners belong to a national association and they put on, from what I can tell, about 5-10 trainings on a variety of securities regulations topics throughout the year.  Usually they pick one or two cities and do all their yearly trainings there - this year was Kansas City.  I know what you're thinking - woo.  Well, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by all KC had to offer - it was definitely more than just BBQ (but that was the highlight).  I'm not going to post much about the conference when I write about this trip because I doubt anyone wants to hear about potential state impact of the newly-passed JOBS Act, SEC updates, and a detailed look at REIT filings.  It was interesting to me though, especially since I need to know this stuff eventually or I'll get fired.

Since I had to fly from Alaska, which took forever, Thursday was nothing but travel.  On the way to KC, I flew through Seattle and ended up connecting up with five attendees (all attorneys) from Washington.  Most were about my age and were really nice and invited me to hang out with them right away.  We totally hit it off and I was really glad they were at this conference with me.  On the first night, I tagged along with them to Oklahoma Joe's BBQ.  It's actually across the border in Kansas, which isn't that far really, and we had to take a cab to get there from our hotel.  When we pulled up, I almost asked the driver to turn back.

Yes, it's located inside a gas station

This place, according to an article on the wall, is listed among Anthony Bourdain's 13 places to eat in the world before you die.  "Man v. Food" and "Diners, Drive ins, and Dives" have also visited this place.  On the wall they post their winning banners from BBQ competitions with clever names like "Slaughterhouse 5."  You can see above that the line is OUT THE DOOR.  This is the line from the inside:

I'm taking that from the front of the line, and it goes all the way back to that little half-wall, out the door, and by the time we left it was wrapped around the building.  This place was also packed with locals - this is how you know it's legit.

This place is pretty low-key and since you order at the counter and bus your own tables they keep it cheap.  For less than $9 including tax this is what I got:

The house specialty - regular pulled pork with pickles and a side of creamy slaw.  This was, hands down, the best pulled pork sandwich I have ever had.  I want one of these right now.  The sauce was also incredible and I wanted to bring some home, but had no way of putting it in my carry on.  The TSA needs to put a "deliciousness" exemption in their >3 oz liquids ban for things like booze and barbecue sauce.  I'll probably be ordering some from the internet.  Yum.

Later I went out and had a beer with the Washingtonians.  Again, these people were really cool - I could not have been luckier to meet them.  I expected I was going to spend the whole weekend hanging out by myself in the Marriott (which was really nice, actually, and I believe is where the players stayed for the MLB All-Star game which we missed by a week).

Friday was conference day and then we went out to explore KC again.  Based on a tip from a concierge, we ended up in the Kansas City Power and Light District.  This place is full of theme bars, has an outdoor concert venue, and was basically just packed with drunk people.  When we got there, the one hit wonder band, Buckcherry, was playing in the outdoor plaza.  We happened to get there right as they played their hit.  We listened and then moved on.  Good timing.  After checking out the options (Irish bar, hip hop bar, tropical bar) We settled on the PBR Big Sky Bar which is the "cowboy bar."  This place was. awesome.

How much Amurrica can you pack into one photo - mechanical bull, American flag, giant Jack Daniels poster, country music blaring, half naked cowgirls dancing on the bar Coyote Ugly style, and someone had to kill about 50 old growth forests to decorate the place. Yee-haw.  While at this place, we witnessed a bar fight, spied quite a few mullets, and saw a girl ride the bull totally topless.  In the interest of keeping the blog PG, I will not be posting any pictures of that lady.  ("Lady" is probably generous considering her behavior.)

Saturday was more conferencing, followed by more BBQ.  This time, we headed out to the place where everyone at the conference told us to go - Fiorella's Jack Stack BBQ.

Outside the restaurant - so you know what you're getting. 

This place was also fantastic, but it was no Oklahoma Joe's.  This time I went for the baby backs.

I love that everything comes with pickles.  I think that's a vegetable in Missouri.

When ordering, I had to ask the waitress about the difference between the baby backs and the pork spare ribs.  She explained by pointing out on her body, as if she were the pig, where the ribs came from. Then she apologized for being gross.  It's okay, lady, I know what I'm eating.  The sides were a little much - I didn't have any room for the fries or the Texas toast, but I turned that rack into a pile of bare bones. One of my new buddies from WA had the ribs both at Oklahoma Joe's and Jack Stack and said OJ's was better (also cheaper).  Even so, these were pretty awesome.  I'm not sure you can get bad BBQ in KC.  

After dinner we headed out in search of a patio to enjoy the nice weather.  Generally in KC it was about 100 degrees and miserably humid, but at night the weather was always perfect - nice breeze, warm weather, no humidity.  We ended up at the patio at McCormick and Schmicks...a little taste of the Northwest.

The view on the patio

Everything at the "Plaza," which was the part of town where our hotel was located (and where the picture was taken), was very spanish style.  This place was ritzy.  If you think KC is full of midwestern hicks, you'd be sorely mistaken.  This part of town had tons of high-end retail stores - Coach, Gucci, Valentino, etc. and we basically just used the places for their air conditioning.  I had no business shopping in any of those stores.  (okay there was an H&M there...I probably could have bought something there).  I appreciated the ambiance though, as it was a nice place to walk around and was only three blocks from the hotel.

one of the many fountains at the plaza.  It was so hot I almost went swimming

Another fountain at the entrance to the plaza - full of Canada geese

In all, the conference was great.  I learned a LOT about my job, I met a ton of new people, I explored a new city, and I probably gained 10 lbs from all the great food I ate.  I actually would plan a trip to go back to KC - maybe on a BBQ road trip or something.  KC is serious about its BBQ and does it right.  There is so much BBQ there, the town actually smells like barbecue sauce and woodsmoke.  If I could bottle that smell and wear it as perfume I would, which I know Andy would totally appreciate.

Nature Dog!

On Saturday we got up and headed up to Flattop with Ripley.  Instead of doing the traditional hike up the peak we decided to go around the back and hike along the powerline pass.

Aptly named.

Andy really liked the sign up there, and proceeded to call me "bearanoid" for the duration of the hike.

Back side of Flattop - look at all the lupin! 

Wild Geraniums!

I need to buy a book to help me identify the flowers around here.  Lupin and Geraniums were all the names I knew.

I really liked these fluffy ones.  No idea what they are.

The scenery was amazing, as usual.  I love that this place is a five minute drive from our house.

looking toward Anchorage

Up powerline pass looking at the Chugach Mountains

We walked around a few of the paths that were marked and found a little stream - complete with a duck that was feverishly trying to survive the rapids.  Get out of the river, duck!

Ripley LOVED the hike.  There were so many things to sniff and to eat!

He loves grass

...and wading

and wandering away from us...this made me a little bearanoid, but we didn't see bears

We had a great day...until we realized that at some point on the trip, Ripley cut one of the pads on his right foot pretty badly.  He was licking it a lot at home and when I looked at it, it was a giant flap with an open gash.  It looked bad enough to take him to the vet, so we went in search of one that was open on Saturdays, and we were able to walk right in - and we didn't have to pay an emergency fee.  Our usual vet is Andy's friend from high school and unfortunately she was out of town or we would have tried to have her look at it.  Thankfully the vet we saw said it wasn't serious and showed us how to take care of it in case Ripley does it again in the future (which he will).  He milked his bandage for all it was worth yesterday:

Surprisingly Doable

When we told people after the last trip that we drove to Alaska in four days, people thought we were crazy.  This time we did it in three and it didn't feel 33% worse per day, in fact, the trip was pretty easy.  I would have to say that the one factor that made the trip better was not having the cats with us.  Traveling with cats is not conducive to super long driving days - we felt bad not letting them use the bathroom all day, and with Ripley he was able to take pit stops with us.  Also, he is used to the car and doesn't scream at us all day long (I'm looking at you, Fro!).  I also think that the route was better and it definitely helped that we called the credit card companies BEFORE we left this time.  Oh, and starting from Seattle also helped.  The four hours I shaved off the drive on the 3rd really helped, especially because the Salem-Seattle drive on I-5 is basically its own special form of torture because it's so boring and familiar.  So really...really...the drive can be done in three days! We did it! Now nobody has any excuse not to visit us.  Oh - and there are these amazing contraptions called airplanes that will get you from Portland to Anchorage in about five hours and from Seattle to Anchorage in about four.  Seriously - no excuses!!

The last day of the trip was familiar to us - Whitehorse to Anchorage.  We knew the places to stop for gas and breaks and we were expecting the roads to be bad, and believe me, they were.  I mentioned in the last blog post that we were hoping they'd do some road work around Kluane National Park.  Ha! Be careful what you wish for!

It's really hard to drive fast in gravel.

Though the gravel was bad, we also hit some spots where we had to stop entirely and wait for pilot cars to take us through some serious construction.  I wonder if they keep trying to fix the roads every year like this and then just end up with the same bumpy roller coaster frost-heaved roads they started with.  I find it hard to believe that the post-construction road is any better than what we encountered in April.

On the drive we saw more grizzlies!! This one was hanging out in the lupin just eating flowers and minding his own business.

Later we saw a family of three bears - a mama and two older cubs.  We didn't get pictures because it was on one of the nicer stretches of roads and I was driving as fast as I could.  But they were cool, I promise.

Just like last time, the scenery from Whitehorse to Anchorage, especially around Kluane National Park was absolutely amazing.  Mountains in all directions and this time, no snow!

When we entered one of the little towns around the National Park, we saw a familiar friend:

Don't worry, wooden police officers can't hand out tickets.  This time I wasn't fooled by the crafty Canadians! 

 More amazing scenery...this time closer to the US/Canada border:

The border! And some tourists...

We did not have the super friendly border agent that we had last time.  This guy was all business and didn't have any entertaining anecdotes about his giant orange cat.  This guy also had a really hard time believing Andy was a lawyer.  He believed me, but was skeptical about him.  Obviously being four months older than Andy makes me look much more mature and responsible.

We hit Tok around 11:30 Alaska time (helped that we gained an hour at the border), fueled up and kept cruising.  I was happy to see gas prices back in the US dollar per gallon vs. 129 CDN cents per liter we were paying in BC.  Some day I might do the math and figure out how much gas is per gallon in Canada.  Or one of you can do that for me.  Thanks.

The road from Tok to Glennallen was absolutely absurd.  In April the roads were pretty good - generally not so frost-heaved and with some well-marked gravel patches that don't surprise you.  Now, it's a total nightmare.  It wasn't even from construction or anything, the roads just completely deteriorated.  I figured they would be at their worst in April, not into the summertime.  Apparently something about finally thawing out just did a number on the pavement.  We hit a GIANT hidden pothole head on around 65 MPH and I thought the wheels were going to fall off the car - it wasn't marked, it wasn't obvious, we just hit it all of a sudden and I almost peed my pants.  Thankfully we didn't damage the car (that we could tell) and we just had to take it slow until Glennallen when the roads improved quite a bit.

The views heading into Mat-Su were as impressive as last time.  We saw a lot of cool lakes and trails that we'd love to explore one weekend.  It's only about 100 miles from Anchorage, so it would be totally doable to just head out and spend the day wandering around out there.  We also got a good view of the Matanuska Glacier.  It's really big and caused quite the traffic jam of travelers stopping to take pictures.  Andy was driving like a horse running back to the barn and didn't want to stop and risk getting trapped behind all the motorhomes we worked so hard to pass, so I had to take a picture of it across the car out his window:

We rolled into Anchorage about 5:30.  It looks like a totally different place than in April - so much greener and with lots of flowers blooming.  Right now there are a ton of lilac bushes in our neighborhood blooming - it's kind of like going back in time to the spring.  I'm interested to see how gardening will be up here after dealing with horrible clay soil and hot temperatures (but relatively cold winters) in Salem.  It'll be interesting for sure.

So that was the drive! Here's a comparison of last time to this time.  When you see it in pictures it really looks SO much more direct.  In the summer time, I would say Cassiar is the way to go...though you miss the buffalo herds around Liard Hotsprings, and the incredible scenery from Fort Nelson to Watson Lake.  It's kind of a toss up if you consider all the stuff you miss by not taking the traditional route.

"Traditional" route going through Mile 0 of the Alcan at Dawson Creek

Via the Cassiar Highway

Note: The last time I posted a map like this, I did not zoom in and realize that Google maps defaulted to the Cassiar route (even Google knows it's faster to go that way).  So I fixed the other map.  Go here to see what I'm talking about. 

Country Bear Jamboree

First of all, hello from Whitehorse, YT! We made our goal and only ended up doing about a 13 hour drive today - much better than yesterday.  Also, after doing this trip twice now, I feel pretty good about labeling Whitehorse the nicest town on the Alaskan Highway.  It's beautiful, situated on the Yukon River, away from the highway but with good access, and there's lots of places to stay, things to see (if you aren't traveling with pets I guess) and places to eat.  It seems like a really livable place, too.  Even when we were here in the freezing springtime, people were always out and about, running along the river and doing fun outdoor activities.  If I had to live in the middle of nowhere, I guess I would probably pick Whitehorse.

Today we drove the full length of the Cassiar Highway, which connects the Yellowhead Highway (where we stopped yesterday in Smithers) to the Alaska Highway (ALCAN).  The best part about this is you cut out about 130 miles of driving distance AND you get to miss the ugliest parts of the "normal" drive including Dawson Creek, which I really really hated (to review that part of the trip from the last time we did the drive, go here).  We didn't miss the flat ugliness of NE British Columbia and were excited to spend the day in the mountains.  We were sad to miss the portion of the drive up near the hot springs where we saw all the bison last time, but the scenery today was completely out of this world and I am so glad we took this route.

Even the forest that had been burned was pretty - and such clear water! 

Ignore those idiots passing each other - look at the view!!

Especially because not too long after we got on the Cassiar, I got to cross another species off my wildlife bucket list!!

Not a polar bear...just a pale young grizzly

I have been talking about seeing bears for MONTHS now.  I was worried that because we were going in the summer, we might miss them since I heard they typically come out in May/June and then kind of retreat back into the forest in the summertime.  Well, whoever told me that was wrong! We also saw a bunch of black bears:

We saw maybe three or four more black bears that we didn't get pictures of.  They were really cute...from the car.   Ripley decided to be tough every time we saw them and barked and growled at them out the window - pretty sure they'd eat your face off if you met them face to face, buddy! We also saw a herd of caribou (sped past them, rather), tons of little chipmunks, squirrels, a couple of ducklings (we almost drove off the road trying not to hit them), and rabbits.

Speaking of Ripley, he's been doing really well.  We set him up with a super smooshy setup in the backseat and he's eye level with the windows.  When he isn't sleeping, he's looking out the window.  He takes pit stops with us every couple hours and is even eating a little (those of you who know Ripley know that this is amazing for traveling...he doesn't even like to eat at the beach house).  He seems to enjoy being in the car actually and I know he's happy to have Andy and I together again.  Right now he's hopping between the queen beds in the hotel room (Andy and I each took our own since we're romantic like that) and he can't decide who to sleep with tonight.

This is what I see when I look in the rearview mirror. His cuteness is totally distracting. 

We'll be up bright and early tomorrow to head to Anchorage.  I was just checking out pictures of the Whitehorse-Anchorage trip from back in April and I can't wait to see what a difference a couple of months makes as far as scenery goes.  You can check out the pictures here and see the difference when I post new pics tomorrow.  I'm also praying that they did some road repairs in the past couple of months.  I am guessing no.

Anchorage tomorrow!!