Well today marks my first full day in Anchorage, as well as my birthday... pretty awesome day if I do say so myself. After all the goodbyes and sappy, sad stuff, I arrived safely last night to the boarding house where I'm staying. The scenery is beautiful, with the snow-capped mountains and birch and aspen trees golden with fall colors. So far I have found people here to be very friendly and helpful (a fact which definitely contributes to my happiness)!
I am pretty impressed with the city itself, it is pretty clean and well laid out...basically a grid pattern (unlike most cities on the East Coast where it seems city planners often suffer from some sort of inability to draw a straight line). I guess my only qualm is that many of the streets are one-way, similar to downtown Raleigh. I definitely went around in concentric circles a total of 4 times trying to get into the REI parking lot (the foul-mouthedness that followed the 3rd missed circle would have made any Hardin family member proud). Speaking of the REI, that store is freakin awesome (Mom you didn't lie).
Anyway, right now I'm basically trying to find an apartment and car... up to this point I have a rental car (a Kia Rio in the sickest shade of green imaginable). Luckily its color lends towards being extremely easy to find in large parking lots. Hopefully I can get all that squared away so I can get out and enjoy some of the real Alaska before it snows too much. Apparently it snowed around a foot in the mountains north of the city over the past day or two, along with temps. tonight supposed to get down around 25 (yikes). It's actually intriguing how although you're basically surrounded by complete wilderness, the city itself lies in a sort of bowl (or delta) that's surrounded by mountains and water. It creates this nice feeling of protection, although it also seems to get the exploration-bug itching.
So that is it for now, hopefully I can stay on top of updating this blog... which partly falls on the you, the reader. If people are reading it and wanting updates and stuff I'll make sure to stay on top of it.
Also... Maddy is doing great and loving everything so far. We took a great little walk at this place called Earthquake Park on the west side of town near the airport. The views were incredible... you could see downtown along with the bordering Talkeetna and Chugach mountains... the Kenai Peninsula, and even Mt. Jefferson (17,000ft) and the highest point in North America, Mt. McKinley (20,000ft). Those jokers are huge.
