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This has been one of the nicest summers I've seen in the 17 years I've lived in south central Alaska. If the weather this summer harmed your business, then you are screwed. Seriously screwed.
One good thing about here....there's plenty to do around. If is not one, it will be the other......too many choices....
Have you thought of using a pop up tent like an EzUp tent? They are pretty cheap considering they give you mobile shelter. Shipping to AK is about $100 more than to TX but I'm sure Sam's wholesale has them... they do down here.
FYI: My wife just looked yesterday at the RN job listings in Anchorage. She was hoping to be encouraged by finding 20-50 positions opened. She was wrong... there are 502! Wow! What... are y'all all ill up there or what!
Not only where there over 500 postings for RN positions but many of them will relocate the RN and family up to $20k AND give signing bonuses! Looks like y'all got yourselves another family full of"'Howdy's" and "Y'alls"!!!
I have a gramma who transferred as an RN up here and they paid all her relocation fees etc. Nurses are needed here and the nursing program up here to grow our own is small and notoriously difficult to get into ( I had a friend who did it.. but she was on the wait list for 2 years).
If your disappointed in our summer here... O MY. This has been THE best summer in the 9 years I have been here. We broke records for how many days over 70 degrees! Not like that awful summer a few years back when it rained 90 days straight (You Alaskans know which one I mean...) That year felt like; Winter-slightly less cold rainy Winter-More Winter. That ws a depressing year. This one has been lovely. I am sad summer is almost gone!
I know I'm late jumping on this, but having lived in Anchorage for 9 years and now Wasilla for the past 2 I think I can speak with some authority about potential issues people are mentioning.
1) The Municipality of Anchorage basically goes all the way to the Knik River Bridge as far as communities go, so you will be subject to property taxes and whatnot as far as that goes. You get larger property sizes in Eagle River and Chugiak and Peters Creek but the prices are comparable to Anchorage itself.
2) The rule on dogs in Palmer someone mentioned is a way to make sure people don't raise huge dog teams on their properties (those folks can have well over 10-20 dogs for a small outfit). After seeing the story in the paper earlier this year about the little girl who was mauled by a sled dog in Wasilla, I certainly would not feel comfortable living somewhere close to neighbors who did that since I have 2 small kids (9 & 5). Before you have a knee jerk reaction "ahhh! rules!! No!" think a bit about what it would be trying to combat.
3) I live in Wasilla close to Teeland Middle School and my commute to midtown Anchorage can be done in 50 minutes (I just did it this morning) if I can keep the cruise on 70 the whole way. If you can schedule your times to leave the house to be after the main rush hour, I would do that for sure.
4) It is a pain in the A** to drive it in the winter (which is why my husband drives and I nap) because every little tiny thing that goes wrong causes a major backlog.
5) Even if nothing goes wrong, there is always the "Eagle River slowdown" as we call it. Traffic pretty much always crawls to a slow 5-10 mph around the Eagle River on ramps. I think the Muni/State needs to do some highway improvements in the area to mitigate it.
6) My husband has lived in Wasilla since he was in 4th grade (so 1984 for him) and he REFUSES to live in Anchorage regardless of the cost benefits of gas, mileage, wear and tear on the car. Sometimes people just don't listen to reason.
7) As far as commute times, if you can find a place that is close to the Parks/Glenn interchange then you could easily have a 40-45 minute commute to Anchorage rather than the 1 hour everyone else is mentioning. I personally want to live in the Ranch subdivision for exactly that reason. That and there are a TON of young families there with kids so you can send your kids out to play with the other kids on the street like you probably remember doing yourself as a child.
8) And regarding the concerns about the city "shutting down" in the winter, that really only happens when we get ice. The city literally turns into a skating rink and you can't go anywhere. That happened a couple years back right before Thanksgiving, I remember. The kids and the college students got a whole week off for Thanksgiving since it took a few days to clear up. Usually snow is not a problem at all. The record snowfall in Anchorage (which I missed) was the infamous St. Patricks Day snowfall in 2001 where a couple feet got dumped. So 24" in 1 snowfall event is the record here. That should tell you something about the amounts we are used to and not used to, and what usually falls. You won't ever see massive snow dumps of several feet. You go to Cordova and Valdez for that. More commonly you get snowfall of a few inches to about a foot in 1 snowstorm which a 4x4 car/truck/SUV can handle with no problem. Don't forget Alaska allows studded tires which really make a big difference. I swear by them. Anchorage aims to get ALL streets cleared within 72 hours of a snowfall. They have a rotating schedule which you can look up online on the Anchorage, Alaska: The Official Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska website website. They rotate it so that way, no one street is ALWAYS left to the last. Obviously main highways are cleared first.
9) I don't know what they use know, but they use something on the Glenn highway now in the winter that clears up snow and ice in a jiffy. My husband and I have commented on more than one occasion how the highway in Anchorage is so much worse than anywhere else because they don't use it there. But it makes the roads dry as a bone in the winter. So wonderful.
I'm sorry that I came to the end of this post... I've enjoyed reading it so much! My hubby and I daydream about moving to AK. We visited in July of 2011 and fell in love... we stayed in Willow and drove from Denali to Kenai and many points in between. It was easy to find our way around Anchorage, and just in our short visit, we determined that it is probably the only city in the world in which we would consider living. I have a lot of family in Atlanta and Houston and we live on 30 very wooded acres in middle GA. I read AK news, FB posts and real estate websites and I watch a lot of AK videos on YouTube. I'm obsessed! I've mostly worked in the hospitality industry, IT and higher education as an admin assistant but I've recently become a realtor to be able to stay at home with our son. My hubby is a hydraulics/forklift mechanic. We have a 17mo old son that we plan to home school with a Christian curriculum and we are outdoorsy folks. I'm sure we'd miss our family but we only see most of them a few times per year anyway. We've thought about selling everything and driving up in an RV in which we would live indefinitely. Please tell me, Gonorth9... Are y'all there yet? Howgoesit?
There are many replies to this thread and I did not read them all, so I will apologize in advance if I am repeating somethings that have already been said. I believe I have some unique insight, having just made the move from Wasilla, Ak to San Antonio this last summer. We also got rid of almost everything we owned. I don't suggest doing this. It is far more expensive to replace everything at once than it is to ship it. In our case we ended up paying the same price for 4000 lbs of stuff as we would've for 6000 lbs because the less weight, the more it costed per lbs. We were able to ship guns (not sure why but we did have to fill out some addition paperwork and disassemble them). Call some different moving companies and have them come out for quotes. Most will do it for free and you can price things out for yourself and they will answer any questions you have.
As far as living in Palmer or Wasilla vs Eagle River or Anchorage, I will say that I think there are definitely pros and cons. You will get more land/home for your money in Palmer or Wasilla, but don't forget to factor the price of commuting for work and recreation. I say recreation because although the Valley is growing, you will find yourself going into Anchorage for many, many things. I have three kids who LOVED living out there and the schools are rated much higher over-all. If we ever went back I would go back to Wasilla. Eagle River is very small too, but only 15 min. from Anchorage on a summer day during non-rush hour. Home prices are higher than the Valley, but there isn't as much crime as in Anchorage and schools are good. Anchorage does have crime and it has progressively gotten worse over the years, but when compared to San Antonio..... it's NOTHING. I can't say much about Anchorage schools except that I know of a few really good Charter/Alternative schools that some families I know are very happy with. Like anywhere, if you are involved in your kids' education, you can navigate them towards better things. All schools in Alaska are MUCH smaller than the schools here. There are 2000+ kids in my kids middle school here as opposed to 750 there. Seven 1st grade classes here where the elementary school my son went to in AK only had three K classes.
Brace yourself for long, cold, dark winters. When the summers are good, like this last one, it'll be worth it. The four or so summers before it were hard. It rained FOREVER and it was hard. But if you like nature you will learn to respect the trade off. Hike up Hatchers Pass and you will feel like you are in another world. Go fishing, go camping, take your kids sledding, and you will fit right in. Just remember, there IS a trade off. The first few years that you are learning to drive in the snow will be scary. There will be times during the long stretch of winter when being outside for more than three minutes will cause physical pain because of the cold. I don't miss that. But the truth is.... I miss the rest, and to me it's worth the trade off. I'm trying to convince my husband to move back. I don't think you'll regret it.
If you have any specific questions PM me. I was born and grew up in AK, so I know it pretty well. Good Luck!
Another Texan here. The liberal scourge continues and it appears there's no end in sight. I don't understand why they want to move somewhere if they are only going to change it into the same place they are fleeing. Because of this issue and many others, I've decided I need an exit plan to leave my once great state. Don't worry, if I make it there I will accept the way you Alaskans do things and would help any way I could to keep it that way.
I'm a single 26 y/o male and I'll be graduating with a General Business and Finance degree this spring. I thinking I will need to work for a couple of years to build up my resume & finances before I can move anywhere (currently in Houston area).
How's the job market in the financial services industry there? (I know that's a vague question but my degree is fairly broad.)
Would a lower level job in this industry provide enough to support someone fairly comfortably despite the high COL in Anchorage?
Few online job postings list salaries online and I don't have much of a clue what people are making up there. That's my main hurdle at the moment.
Of course I'm not going to move 4000+ miles away without visiting and doing much more research but I need a rough plan in the mean time. (A rough plan may also keep me from driving through the next critical mass rally I see due to frustration I'm beginning to have with these people.)
I mainly wanted to say hi and thank everyone for all the info they previously provided. Overall, you Alaskans seem like great people, you even apologize to strangers online after a disagreement.
One more thing, I'm going to buy a 4x4 Tacoma soon anyway. Would this would be a good vehicle for the elements if the stars aligned and I made it up there? I assume there are Toyota dealerships there as I would need one for warranty work, ect.
Looking at car dealers in Anchorage to make sure I didn't end up with a vehicle I could not get serviced in Anchorage I was hard pressed to find one that wasn't represented. Except Tesla. (and other's I couldn't ever hope to afford....)
I don't want to create a new thread for this, so this is why I post this here.
I just finished taking a virtual tour (aka, Google Street View, lol) of Anchorage and for some odd reason I'm shocked it looks like a typical lower 48 city and suburbs. I guess the image that is often sold to us of Alaska in general is of a giant wilderness full of pines and bears, with wood log type of buildings in their towns. Never quite equated Alaska with typical suburbia.
Am I the only one that had this impression of Alaska?
By the way, why do you guys have an interstate up there? This reminds me of the interstates in Hawaii. I always thought an interstate was a limited access highway that connected more than one state. Oh well... lol
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