Being journalists and all,
Chad and I are cashless. The power
outage means, of course, that the Creekside cannot run our credit
cards. In the Lower 48, we'd either be washing dishes or leaving
the rights to our firstborns as collateral until we could return
with payment.
"Lunch is on us," says assistant manager Leigh Anne Williams, a
Georgia transplant going on her seventh year in
Alaska. Yeah, they
definitely do things differently around here. Perhaps it's the
light?
"Obviously, the 22 hours of light is better for your psyche," says
Ryan Binkley, captain of the riverboat
Discovery. "In
winter, you get cabin
fever - the pioneers would literally go
crazy. When spring comes, it's a weight off your shoulders."
So in the end, Alaskans tend to put up with the unrelenting
darkness and bitter cold of winter as a penance for what many
consider to be the perfect summer. After all, what other reason
could there be for wanting to colonize the harsh extremes of the
last frontier?
Well, there is that business of the Permanent Fund Dividend as
well. What's that, you say? You're not familiar with the good ol'
PFD? Well, neither were we. Turns out, up this way yearly checks
relating to oil royalties - sometimes upward of the $2,000 range -
are doled out to all permanent residents of Alaska …
just as a
way to say thank you.
I told you, they do things differently around here.
What You Should Know
American Airlines offers daily service in the summer to Anchorage
from Dallas/Fort Worth and
Chicago, and offers daily codeshare
service year-round via
Anchorage and
Seattle on Alaska Airlines.
For more information, visit
www.aa.com.
El Dorado Gold Mine
www.eldoradogoldmine.com
(866) 479-6673
Fly Denali