State Capitol: Juneau-It's a small city on the thumb of Alaska, more commonly called the panhandle. No road leads to juneau. The only ways to get there are by flying, swimming, walking, or dog sled. You may ask, "Why would anyone ever choose such a remote city for the capitol?" Well if you went around talking to every Alaskan about it, you would soon realize how weird they all are and that it makes sense that they chose a capitol in a weird location. You might also find out that we had a gold rush one time. The most common way to get to the gold fields in the Yukon/Western Alaska was to take a boat to Juneau, party it up, then go to Skagway to start up a ridiculously long walk to get rich or die-literally. Juneau was a fun stop along the way, so it became the capitol. Nobody has gotten around to changing it yet.
The Iditarod: Alaska's biggest sporting event. Dogs pulling people all the way across the huge state. It's pretty cool as far as stuff to get excited about in Alaska goes. People like Lance Mackey, Jeff King, Doug Swingley, Deedee Jonrowe and Martin Buser are celebrities in Alaska and you've probably never even heard their names, and probably didn't remember them if you did hear their names.
State Bird: Willow Ptarmigan-Pronounced with a silent P. It's Alaska's most stealthy animal. In the winter it's white and, unlike the rest of the states in the U.S., snow stays around all winter long in Alaska, so white actually works for camo. Then they turn brown in the summer. I've heard they taste good. The most interesting thing about Ptarmigans is that there's a city named after them. The gold miners back in the day wanted to name the city Ptarmigan after the authentically Alaskan bird. They didn't know how to spell it, so they just said, "Oh heck, we'll call it Chicken." Chicken's population is 17 as of 2006, exponentially decaying from it's maximum capacity during the gold rush when it had 400 people in it. Their main industry is tourism for the crazies who drive up there just to say they went to Chicken, Alaska and the gold rush obsessives who take their family to Dawson City, Canada and stop by Chicken on the way.
United States National Bird: Bald Eagle-Alaska has a bald eagle infestation problem. There's a heated debate on whether or not we should leave the U.S. so we can get rid of all those pesty bald eagles. Just kidding, but seriously, we have plenty to go around up there.
Alaska is only 1 mile from Russia. Palin may have actually been telling the truth if she lived on Little Diomede Island. But as it turns out, Wasilla is quite far from Russia.
Alaska has a lot of ice. There's lots of glaciers up in AK and then if you go up to the arctic ocean, you don't have to go too far off the beach (where all the oil workers are working on their Midnight Sun tan) to find permanent ice floating out there. The latest figure I heard was that Alaska had enough ice to fill up all the glasses of whiskey in Kentucky for a whole year. Now that's a lot of ice! On a less alcoholic note, but a more commercialism note, once all that ice in the arctic ocean melts, Barrow, Alaska is going to be the New New York. So you'd better watch out. Global warming may be bad for those polar bears, but it's great for American Commercialism.
Now you know a few facts about Alaska.
P.S. I'm sure none of you will believe me, but I'm actually in Alaska right now, and we do in fact have the internet up here.
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