Anchorage!!!!! Apt finding trip.....or was it a vacation?? Hmm....oops

I'm breaking up my trip to Anchorage into a few posts so you don't have to read the boring stuff about the apartments to get to the fun stuff about Alaska. With that said, here's the boring apartment stuff and the trip to Alaska......

This weekend was pretty amazing considering it was only a 3 day trip and 1 day was spent traveling. I saw snow-covered mountains, lakes and rivers, and even a small iceberg. However, the purpose of the trip was to find an apartment because I will be moving there for 6 months with ConocoPhillips starting in September. For those that don’t know, it’s cold in Alaska in the winter, and most of my stay in Anchorage will be in the winter. I left Houston at 5:30 Thursday evening, stopped in Seattle for an hour, and then took off for Anchorage around 930 Pacific Time. It was dark when I left Seattle, yet when we rose above the clouds, I could see the horizon in the distance. It looked more like a sunrise then a sunset. It was still light at 11:30 PM when we started the initial descent into Anchorage. I took a couple of quick pictures of Anchorage before we landed. Anchorage is sandwiched between mountains on the east, and the bay on the west. It is a city of about 250,000 with a very diverse culture of Americans, Eskimos, Asians, Samoans, military guys, and of course oil guys. The population of Anchorage is half of the entire population of Alaska.

I checked into my hotel, a suite with a full kitchen, living room, and bedroom and quickly passed out. Friday morning, I woke up early and started my tour of local apartment complexes. I had a list of about 10 places ranging from corporate (fully-furnished) apts, hotels providing suites like the one I was staying in, and a couple unfurnished places. Anchorage is expensive!! And most of the apts were fully booked because a lot of people stay in Anchorage for the summer months. The tourists start leaving in September. So, I could not actually see any of the actual apartments, because people were still living in them. Very frustrating!! How am I supposed to pay $1500 per month for a place that I haven’t even set foot into.

The one apartment I finally convinced someone to show me was not as nice as I thought it would be, was around the corner from a halfway house, and was pretty-run down. However, it was within a mile of work. I found an unfurnished apartment that I liked a lot, but it is a huge pain to furnish the place….all the way down to pots, pans, and dishes. By the way, the 15-1700 bucks for corporate apartments includes everything (utilities, cable, etc)…..but that’s still a steep price to pay. I didn’t find a place to live, so I am gonna work the phone lines from Houston, and if all else fails, try again in September when I get there. The company provides me a hotel for 10 days while I am looking for a place. Enough about the boring stuff!

Graduation Night with the brothers!!