Living in Alaska for a Spell

After being back in my home town for a while following my Montana trip, I was still looking for my next move. While I was picking up work here and there, it wasn’t enough to save anything and get ahead.

Why Alaska?

I was beginning to think Southern California wasn’t for me anymore.

That is around the time a friend of mine gave me a call from Alaska. He had left for a job in Healy around when I left for Montana. It turns out that someone was leaving the job early for personal reasons and they needed to fill the position asap.

It being literally in the middle of Alaska positions are a little difficult to fill.

Flying to to the top of the world

This was by far the longest flight I’d ever been on. We had a layover in Seattle for about an hour. From Seattle the plane took off into the sunset.

During the flight it never actually got dark, the sun would dip behind the horizon and then pop back up again a few minutes later.

Denali State Park

The job was working for a private company that runs lodges in Denali National Park.

Sunset in Healy, Alaska

Healy is beautiful if you look in the right places. Other than that, it’s really just a hole in the wall on the side of the road.

I could tell right away that this place wasn’t for me.

Luckily, my Mom has a good friend in Anchorage, she was excited at the prospect of me coming to stay for a few months.

I packed up my things and headed south.

Kincaid park disc golf course, hole eighteen

One of the first things I did was search out local disc golf courses. There were a few to choose from so I was able to find a really good one at Kincaid Park.

Other than the crazy insects that swarm you it was a really nice place to play.

Kincaid park meadow

Kincaid park has over fifteen hundred acres of land accessible to the public. There are a lot of hiking/ cross country skiing trails to check out.

Matanuska Glacier is the largest that is accessible by car in the US

We decided it would be a good idea to take a drive up north a bit and check out a glacier. It was quite a drive but worth it in the end.

Me on top of the glacier, this is as far as I’d go without equipment.

Having a beer with the pack

When I wasn’t working obscene hours at Costco, visiting glaciers or playing disc golf, I could generally be found hanging out with my neighbors on the front lawn drinking beers with the dog pack.

All in all it was a really nice time. Imbibe responsibly peeps!

Thanks again Karen! ;P

At the shooting range

William, my roommates son took me shooting the day before I left. Not a bad way to spend my last hours in Alaska I’d say.

There is something about holding a semi-automatic shotgun that you can’t describe in words.

All packed up and ready

After deciding that Alaska ultimately wasn’t for me I arranged a flight to meet a buddy in Idaho. From there we’d road trip back to Southern California.

Pit stop in Boise, Idaho before heading home

The first thing I did when I finished settling into my hotel room on the first night was look for a place throw some discs.

Along the way to Ann Morrison park the trail snakes along the river.

Fall was in full swing in Boise. This was along the ‘Greenbelt’, which cuts through the middle of the city with lush greenery and the winding Boise river.

As luck would have it, there was a disc golf course at the place I decided to go. I actually didn’t search for courses, just opened Google Maps and found the closes green area and went there.

I think it was meant to be.

One of the last things I did while there was check out the University campus. It’s right off of the Greenbelt so it wasn’t far out of our way.

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A note about this post

This wasn’t actually posted on the date listed. I am adjusting the dates to match around when the events happened.

Thank you for reading!