My First Time in Anchorage, Alaska

I moved to Anchorage in late 1985 and spent the first six months staying with my mother & looking aggressively for a job. I arrived there in the winter (coming from East Texas) and there was alot of snow to learn how to walk on. I caught the bus across the street from my mother's house and went downtown to put in applications. At that time there were many jobs to be had in Anchorage; computer skills were highly valued and would place you at the top to be considered for jobs at the best paying oil companies.

I got a job with the National Park Service. I worked there two years and then went on to work contract. There were so many contract jobs that I could afford to work this (as a single woman). I worked mostly for the large oil companies. I managed housing by renting a room in a house shared by a professor at UAA, a go go dancer and ski teacher.

Alaska's summer was nonstop sunlight to twilight and it almost felt like too much light (and it probably was). The winter was snow storm after snow storm gathering on the roads. Sometime there was so much snow, I'd get stuck and have to get my shovel out of the back of my car to get unstuck). The darkness in the winter was contrasted by the reflection of all the snow.

Anchorage is the sunbelt of Alaska as it gets the balmy hawaiian warm waves that flow into the waters of Cook Inlet. It is much warmer than Fairbanks (where Susan Stevenson lives). Anchorage has beautiful mountains (the Chugach range) on one side and the water (Turnagain Arm) on the other side. Scenicly beautiful...... Downtown Anchorage is quite attractive. Anchorage's worst weather patterns are usually in the first two weeks of January (ranging -15). All other winter times, there was temps like 10, 15, 20. We considered 30 a warm winter day.

Into my fourth year as a single person there in Anchorage, I met Greg. Greg and I dated for five months and married at one year together. We went to Oahu on our honeymoon in December of 1989 and got 'stuck' over there as a volcano near Anchorage went off (shooting ash in the air). Hawaiian Air was not going to fly into Anchorage with the ash problem; so when it was looking like we would be in Oahu for too long, we bought tickets to Seattle to get on an Alaska Airline flight (who was flying into Anchorage).

Greg got orders for Ft Carson, Colorado and so we got packed out for our move to Colorado Springs. We drove the Alcan and managed to get over the Canadian border, when the Uhaul trailer, carrying my new Ford Escort, came up with a flat (with no spare tires). We were in the Yukon territory. We called back to the Anchorage U-haul for help. They told us that it would be several days before they could come out. That, being the only solution; we left the trailer with the Canadian police for holding and took off in our two cars driving through Whitehorse, Edmonton and on down to Colorado.