Anchorage

Anchorage

  I spent the last two weeks in Anchorage.  I met the wonderful team that I will be supporting, spent a ton of time driving around the city looking at the area trying to figure out where I wanted to live.  Thanks go out to Larry Dykes http://www.larrydykes.com/ with Prudential here in Anchorage, he was great to work with and showed me some beautiful homes for purchase.  I've decided to rent a home at this time and found a wonderful home close to Lake Hood.

The Lake Hood is the largest and busiest float plane base in the world so I'm sure I'll hear a lot of buzzing going on when the weather is good.  There are tons of bush pilots who make their living taking customers fly fishing, bear watching and on glacier tours.

Float Plane at Lake Hood

To me Anchorage is about the size of a cross between Columbia and Greenville, SC.  Good size but not too big.  There are several military bases on the North side of town and the highway leads to Eagle River, Palmer, Wasilla (Sarah Palin's hometown) and on towards Denali National Park.  South takes you towards Seward, Kenai and Homer. 

There's a beautiful area called Hillside on the South side of town that overlooks the city.  There are Mountains to the East and the Bay to the West. Everyone here refers to the city by directions, North, South, East or West and then there's downtown.  It's easy to get around and hard to get lost.  Ton's of people ride bikes and for me I am going be very careful and will have to watch for bike riders.  I'm just not used to seeing them back home. 


View from the Hillside area

On Monday I was out to lunch with one of the members of the leadership team and we were in Quiznos and there was a low rumbling sound. The sound grew louder and the ground started shaking pretty good and then there was this pretty significant jolt that felt like the floor just shifted about three or four inches in one direction and abruptly stopped.  It felt like it does when you are riding a ride at the fair and it comes to a stop at the end.  Needless to say, it was a pretty good sized earthquake that registered over 5 on the Richter scale.  Earthquakes are a part of live here and they don't generally get people all rattled up.  However, there are a bunch of people who vividly recall the Great Alaskan Earthquake that hit in 1964.  Anchorage was hard hit as were most of the coastal rim towns in the State.  There are villages that were claimed by the sea and never rebuilt.  There is a great link to the Alaska Earthquake Center http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/recent/sub/index.html that will show you on a daily basis all of the earthquakes that have taken place in Alaska during the week check it out you might be surprised by the numbers! 

Earthquake Damage 1964 - Anchorage