I’ve been busy this week in Anchorage, Alaska, attending the Alaska Water & Wastewater Management Association Annual Conference.   The conference has been pretty good, but the best part has been meeting the people.  Quite a hardy lot they are!

As you’ve always heard, everything is bigger and farther in Alaska, and whoever said that is right.  The distances are deceiving and the remoteness of some of the towns and villages mind boggling.  Just the last 30  minutes of the flight up the Cook Inlet seemed to take forever. 

The Cook Inlet is bordered on the West by the Aleutian Chain and Alaska Range of mountains, on the north by the Talkeetna Mountains and on the the east by the Kenai Peninsula and the Chugach and  Kenai Ranges.  Anchorage sits in the glacial alluvial plain between the ranges.  The photo above really gives the proper perspective to just how big the mountains are around here.

I never knew this, but the Cook Inlet (discovered by Captain Cook of Hawaii fame), has the second highest tidal change in North America – up to 25 feet in tidal change.  The Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage, experiences tides of up to 30 feet and a tidal bore of up to 5 feet in height.  It’s very strange to see so much land exposed at low tide.

I met a fellow from Bethel, AK.  It’s 340 miles west of Anchorage.  There are no roads to get there, you have to fly in or boat in.  All their groceries, staples, hardware, everything has to be flown or barged in, making them extremely expensive.  $8 gallons of milk are common.  In the winter, only the planes can make it in due to the sea ice.  He says that there are more ATVs and snowmobiles in Bethel than there are vehicles.

I’ll have another post later on with some photos from the trip.  It’s getting late.  Still daylight out, though.  10:30 p.m. and the sun’s still up.  Heading home tomorrow.