Tuesday was our first full day in Anchorage and most of the day was spent in exploring some parts of Elmendorf AFB and a few blocks of the center of the city. One surprising item at the Air Force Base (and the reason for the photo above) is a program to care for injured Bald Eagles. There are only a few photos (click here), but for those of you who have never visited a modern military site, I thought you might be interested in knowing that in addition to the military activities (in this case primarily in support of a 'flight line'), there are such things as housing, schools, day care facilities, gas stations, mini-marts, a hospital and, among others, a mall-like complex that consists of typical mall type kiosks and shops, a food court, Starbucks, a relatively large grocery store and a Base Exchange (much like a K-Mart or the like). Tracy also introduced us to what she referred to as a 'Lemon Lot' where service members can offer vehicles for sale. Naturally, we took some time to check out the available RV's.
The city of Anchorage itself has very much the appearance of any North American small city with buildings of all shapes and sizes and businesses of all sorts. One thing that might particularly set it apart form most of modern cities...I saw no evidence of the downtown blight that has affected so many of the cities that you may be familiar with.
3 comments:
that's quite a facility - are there non-military people living there too - or is it just THAT big and full of air force folks to be able to support so many businesses and other services?
Loved the pictures on your kodack galleries.
Very interesting statues in front of starbucks... I presume those are representative of the original settlers in the area... before, ya know... all that evolution stuff started and they shed their animal heads for human ones... or shed their human bodies for animal ones (depending on their mammalian preference).
Hooray for no blight - find out what the difference is and bring some down here for the rest of the cities to enjoy :)
Ah yes, it would appear that evolution did take a bit of a different track up here...mostly for the best. As to the absence of city blight, this is not to say there are no 'bad' sections of town that should be avoided at night and homeless people,etc.; however, it was still good to see a vibrant downtown and it is a bit bigger than I expected. I will hope to get more pics of it to share over the next couple of days.
Looks like you guys are having a great time. The pictures on the Kodak site are great! Seeing all the great pictures makes Jen and I want to go back to Alaska too. I'm supposing that at this time of year there are still a few hours of night time left, but you should try being there later in the summer when the sun literally never sets. It makes for some really great sunset pictures. Have a safe trip home, but if you have time check out the statue of Balto in downtown Anchorage where they start the Iditorad race.
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