michelle emily: Alaskahhhh

I went to Alaska! My dear friend Allie's family moved from Portland to an Eskimo village while she was on her mission. No kidding, a legit Eskimo village where the people don't have running water a lot of the time and they have to get there by a little 6 person plane. A couple of months ago, her mom messages me asking if I'd like to come and surprise her in AK. I've never been there, so a hop over another country later, I find myself already encountering Alaska weather. About an hour from Anchorage, where I was supposed to land, the pilot gets on his intercom and explains that the winds in Anchorage are so bad, they had to evacuate the flight control tower. Apparently, they were clocking winds at over 100 mph. So for safety's sake, we landed in Fairbanks, just an hour more north. Well, an hour of flight, but 6.5 hours of driving north of where I needed to be. It's the beginning of September, people! And I had a no so great experience with that, but this is a happy post, so I'll write about that later.

my day spent in Fairbanks after a sleepless night

Fairbanks, AK

I finally get to Anchorage Wednesday night after a day in Fairbanks and instead of me running to her coming out of the gate, she runs to me. I was bummed that the surprise was kinda ruined, but it was so fun to see her, anyways! Since it was late, we hung out at the hotel and talked and I showed her how to do things on her iPhone and we talked some more while she got on Facebook for the first time in a year and a half. It was like no time has lapsed, but at the same time, we are different and grown up, so it's different, too.

Thursday, we did some post-mission doctors stuff and I got to see Anchorage in the day time. Flying into Alaska, it looked like the tundras that you see on "Planet Earth." I know you watch "Planet Earth," too, so you know what I'm talking about. It was still pretty windy and just about as cold as I expected it to be (like late fall, even though it's summertime). Anchorage is the biggest city in Alaska, but there aren't that many people and it's not very big, so that'll give you an idea of how tundra-esque this state is. The people remind me of small-town southern people. It's just pretty and quaint and the people are nice.

ain't no fear in the last frontier

We had lunch at this spunky little bar and grill downtown called Rum Runners. I ate some yummy salmon chowder in a bread bowl.

We had a tour on a trolley of the city and here are some things that I learned and found interesting:
1. There are about 2,000 moose in the Anchorage area, which means about 1 moose per square mile. Now, it was my #1 goal while I was in AK to see a moose, so I pretty excited about that.
2. We drove across a landing strip for the airport. A LANDING STRIP. WHERE PLANES LAND. AND WE DROVE ON IT. Apparently, you just have to look both ways for a plane.
3. They refer to us down here as the "Lower 48."
4. AK is the #1 consumer of ice cream in the US. No one knows why, but I thought that was just odd that it beat out, like, hotter places, ya know?
So post-tour, we ate some ice cream and I met Sarah Palin while we were at it.

downtown

I met a bear

Then we hit up the Anchorage Museum. They had an exhibit from the Smithsonian about the tribes of Alaska and had some cool artifacts.

I wish I saw a live moose up close, but this would have to do until I saw one the next day.

pretty museum exterior

For dinner, we ate at The Peanut Farm Restaurant, which isn't a farm and I didn't see any peanuts, but it had a cool view of the river and yummy food.

That night, I took Allie to her first movie since being back from the mish. We chose to see "Brave," since that's pretty mild.

The next morning, before our flights, we drove up to the cabin we were going to stay in before the power outage and got this great view. Oh, and I saw a real moose on the side of the road on the way up (no picture :( )