Well, Anchorage is Cool

Very cool city. Nothing to speak of visually; it's very utilitarian. However, there's a lot of fun stuff going on there.

Why, you ask, was I in Anchorage when I meant to go to Fairbanks? Well, that is a long and not very interesting story. Let's just shorten it, shall we? Weather delay on Friday morning made us late for our flight out of Bethel. We barely missed being able to board. Like by five minutes. The next flight out would have put us in Anchorage too late to get on the plane to Fairbanks, so we decided, what the hell, we'd just hang out in Anchorage.

So we got our names on the next flight to Anchorage. After being molested by the FTSA employee (those randomly selected pat-down searches are mighty personal... I swear she was trying to feel me up), we got on the plane and were on our way to Anchorage.

The rest of the trip was just us accomplishing task after task (I got two Christmas presents bought, obtained an Alaska drivers' license, and drank beer). We went dumpster diving behind Border's bookstore because we needed cardboard boxes to mail our loot home in. It was a cardboard-only dumpster, so it was a very clean experience. Otherwise we would have had to buy boxes at Wal-Mart or the post office, which I was NOT in the mood to do.

24 hours of return-trip delays (don't ask) after we were SUPPOSED to be back in the village, here I am, tired and stressed out. Next Thanksgiving I'm just going to stay here and nap the whole time... which is not to say that it wasn't great fun. I love Anchorage, or at least the parts I saw. But travel stresses me out. This last minute here-and-there changing of flights just raises my blood pressure.