What do YOU like about living in Alaska?

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by ak.nessa

Metlakatla: Feel free to talk about your dislikes as well...! I'd love to hear it all.


The northern lights are beautiful and yet so strange...sometimes feels like you're getting abducted by aliens!

Uh oh. LOL. I'll keep my comments specific to POW because outside of Whitesilla I really have no complaints about the rest of the state.

What I don't like is the micro police states that the Troopers have tried to create and pretty much succeeded on certain parts of the Island. Last summer I was minding my own business at a fish processing plant and some trooper came dragging up my driveway with a truckload full of confiscated halibut. I had already gotten a phone call from the lady at the food bank asking if we would process the fish and flash freeze it and she said she'd be willing to pay (now and then we do it gratis for the food bank, but this was a huge amount and we were slammed). I told her we'd do it for cost. So anyway the Trooper starts trying to bully me into doing it for free. I didn't have the staff for that; my crew was already working every day every waking hour. Anyway, the clown would not let up and became pretty rude. I told him he was welcome to speak with the other two people involved in making that type of decision in ten minutes when they returned from the Post Office but that wasn't good enough. He really tried to intimidate me. Anyway...he took the halibut and went away and then the lady at the food bank heard about it and became very angry with him because she had spoken to me about it and we had agreed what we'd do. So another food bank got the halibut and brought it to us.

This trooper had less than no business trying to intimidate me. And in the old days, he would have known who the hell I was. The Island hasn't grown that much; these outside law enforcement officers should get to know the local business people.

Another time, my son was walking on the beach and a Trooper started questioning him as to what he was doing. He wasn't doing a damned thing but walking his dog on his father's land. He felt harassed and I'm sure that he was. Again, in the old days, the Trooper would have known who he was and would have known whose land he was on.

They come here to train for their dream jobs in Anchorage or wherever and they don't bother to become part of the community or get to know the locals. Their snotty little wives slam everything about the Island and all they can squawk about is how they can't wait until their husbands put in enough time to relocate to Anchorage where they have stores and everything.

In both instances I cited, I feel that the Troopers in question were trying to provoke a situation by harassing people instead of doing their jobs. Neither my son or myself are people who have any history at all of conflicts with law enforcement.

I'm not the only one who has experienced these problems. I don't know what the answer is.

[starlite9]

I think that is a lot of the State's doing as well. They do a lot of out of state recruiting and the recruits are from the city, don't like the smaller towns as well as their families. Now we have this new AK Trooper show on TV will more than likely exasperate that problem. There are a lot of Troopers that do fit into the local towns, go to the school and sit and have lunch with the kids just to answer their questions and so forth. The ones that fit into that climate, love it and aren't in any hurry to get to Anchorage or Fairbanks and they do get to know everyone in town on a first name basis.

Sometimes progress really sucks but we are going to be a lot more "Progressed" as time rolls
on.

[Marty Van Diest]

Moose Stew. Yum, just the thing for a snowy evening.

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by Marty Van Diest

Moose Stew. Yum, just the thing for a snowy evening.

Moose chili with cheese and diced onions aren't too bad either, after a long snoemachine trip or just being out in the cold!

[Rance]

The ever changing scenery, the northern lights, the fish, snow, just everything.

[bongo]

In the summer, backpacking & hiking, particularly in Denali.

In the winter, skate skiing out my back door on groomed trails.

[AADAD]

At Freddy Meyers I was unloading my groceries into my car and a guy comes up and offers to take my cart back across the lot. not an employee. I find that people will help and talk to a "stranger" easily and find commonality is being human beings. Nice.