Anchorage

Turnagain Arm Anchorage

About half the people in Alaska live in one city, Anchorage. It is a good base location for us. We have a modern house now, but for years we lived in a Quonset hut in the Chugach Mountains east of the city. We had to haul water and start a wood fire every morning in the winter. It was a sacrifice in some ways, but it freed us to be able to travel and to start my business. It kept life simple.

Only one road leads south from Anchorage and only one road leads north. The city is between Cook Inlet and the Chugach Mountains on a point of land between Turnagain Arm (see photo) and Knik Arm.

The following Anchorage adventures and stories are in reverse chronological order, with the most recent stories listed first. If this is your first time here, you might want to click the last link. Links at the end of each story will guide you through the series in order. I'll add more links to the top of the list as things occur.

Wild Weather

Snow, Snow and More Snow

Guarding the House

Mad Moose

Slip Sliding Away

The Blizzard of 2000

Farewell to the Quonset Hut

Treed by Moose

Speaking of moose, there are actually more wild animals in Anchorage than there are at our homestead and in many of the wilderness locations we visit. That's because no one hunts them here. We've been trying to plant some decorative trees, but unless we wrap everything with netting, the moose devour it. We frequently have moose in the yard, and they aren't the least afraid of us or the dog. Sometimes we've seen them with tiny newborn calves that race around and play.

It may have been inevitable that the moose would discover that, despite the risk of being hit by cars, it is safer to raise calves in the city. Fewer predators. Now the predators are here, too. We came home a few years ago from a trip to our wilderness homestead. Friends who were staying in our basement said they'd come home late one evening to find a grizzly bear chasing a moose around the house! They positioned their vehicle to slow the grizzly and give the moose a chance to get away. A year later, Dennis noticed crowds of kids on the roof of a nearby middle school, looking and pointing toward the woods. A grizzly bear was feasting on a moose calf, with the bereaved cow in the near vicinity. I suppose the teachers were talking about the food chain.

Last year, our dog treed a lynx on one of his walks in the neighborhood. Since then, we joke that he's "searching for the missing lynx."

If the wild animals don't keep things interesting, there is always the potential for an earthquake or volcanic eruption. In 1990, my fourth-grade class had just studied volcanoes when Mt. Redoubt erupted. We could see it from the classroom window. One of my newer students was amazed. He wrote in his journal, "I have never lived in a city with its very own volcano."