Alyeska, Girdwood -Jahlaska

    For spring break and the following week I went to ski in Alaska! Alyeska Resort to be exact- in the town of Girdwood, about one hour outside of Anchorage. It was EPIC to say the least. The main attraction to the town is the ski resort as well as the awesome  back country terrain and LOTS of cold, fluffy powder :) However, this town also has very interesting history, it was initially attracted gold miners becuase of its great location near numerous streams, rivers, and the ocean. In the 50's or 60's there was a huge earth quake that destroyed the original town site of Girdwood as well as caused the ground to sink to sea level so due to salt water seepage the soil could no longer support any continental plant life. Along this coast there are huge skeleton trees. 

In these two pictures you can see the mud flat that used to be Girdwood. This is now a tidal flat also called sink mud, this is a very interesting thing that I have not seen before.. the receding tide pulls water from the saturated mud and creates a suction in the mud.. the hotel people told me a lady got suck a few years ago and they tried to free her with a helicopter and she got ripped in half! Awful right? anyway suck mud excursions were not recommended.
Also in the bottom picture you can see the highway the connects Anchorage, Girdwood, and past to Kenai and beyond. It is only two lanes ocean on one side and rock face on the other. The locals say it is super dangerous when it snows which only adds to Girdwood's skiing exclusivity.

This is the Hotel Alyeska, the major hotel in the town. This is the only accommodation around within an hour, and it is an amazing hotel. It has eight stories, two bars, a sushi bar, two other restaurants with a phenomenal breakfast buffet. It is ski in&out and attached to a tram that goes to the top of the North Face of the ski area, and a very expensive restaurant that I never went too. During our time there the 2011 U.S. Adaptive Alpine Skiing Championships were being held..

All of the athletes and trainers for this event were staying in the same hotel as us so we got the opputunity to meet SO many cool, tough, great athletes. I felt that we were very special to be a part of this we met so disabled athletes that just kicked ass.  If you are interested in learing more about this amazing event check: http://usparalympics.org/news/2011/03/22/alyeska-resort-hosts-the-2011-u-s-adaptive-alpine-championships/41521

This is the Crow Creek Mercantile, the only place to buy groceries in town, and they have a very limited selection of everything. There are numerous fancy restaurants in town to cater to the tourist population, but the hotel does not have microwaves in their rooms so the demand for raw food is not principal. It is a single story building, personally owned store, however they do accept Safeway cards.

Girdwood is a great little town with a very interesting history. Its has great skiing, and all sorts of other winter activities. In the summer the hotel remains open as there is world class mountain biking here as well.  

Suburbia to beyond

       Suburbia- Boulder Point

The concept of suburban neighborhoods came about with the mass production of automobiles and the latter construction of nice, maintained, accessible roadways. People who could get places much easier and quicker and soon everyone had a car, this in turn allowed people who wanted to live away from the busy city to do so, while still commuting to their job and errands in the commercial district in the city.

       The suburban neighborhood that we looked at for this class, is a great part of town. I live in the Arbors condominiums which is just down the hill from the Boulder Point neighborhood. First off i noticed the houses were all different colors and quite well maintained; everything including sheds and main building attachments were freshly painted matching colors. Even the fences were nicely painted/finished or deliberately made to look rustic.

The yards of these houses are all maintained but they are very picturesque. Not very many of the yards that I saw were grass, but rock and shrubs and small trees, which is great for the water conservation movement. There are a lot of Ponderosa Pines in front yards and even more in the backyards. All these houses have at least two are three car garages, and the ones that are open sometimes didnt even have room for more than one car, they rest was packed with all sorts of different stuff. The garages all had entrances to the house, and in some cases they had doors too even more places. The houses with these grand garages usually had even more grand front entrances, with carved wooden pillars and stone steps, most of these facades were build on the front of house facing the street, but again, there were also less grand but not shabby external entrances on other sides of the houses.

The driveways of all these houses were paved with concrete and it was not oil spotted or seriously damaged, the asphalt in the road is recently tarred and properly painted with appropriate markings. This is interesting for me because there is a significant of geologic activity in Flagstaff, so it really must be high maintenance to keep all the asphalt and concrete in this neighborhood in good repair, and if they were not regularly maintained the sidewalk would look like the sidewalks around the Uni Heights Apartments, which are very cracked and have major differences in the heights of the slabs. The exception to the great neighborhood street repair is going west on University because it is FILLED with potholes and crap. In spirit of the civil engineering we talked about this is a picture of the LOVELY well maintained, car safe curb in Boulder Point.