Alaska, the Last Frontier

From 1983 to 1990, with a couple of summers off during those years, I coached College Summer Baseball in Anchorage, Alaska. These were magical summers for me, getting to coach some of the very best college players in the country and seeing Alaska, a place that has a very strong pull for me to this day. I have been there twenty-two times and spent more than a year of my life in baseball-related activities. The top photo is of me in 1983 standing on a glacier outside of Wasilla/Matanuska, known now as the home of Sarah Palin, about an hour outside Anchorage.The middle shot is of the river flowing through the Matanuska Valley. I really had no idea about depth of field then, so the foliage on the left is seriously out of focus. The bottom photo is from the front of the "apartment" where we stayed in 1983, located over a Mexican Restaurant with the flue from the kitchen running through the living room. The car in the foreground is typical Alaskan...dented, rusting, and generally in a sad state of disrepair. The Alaskan winters are extremely hard on vehicles. The empty street and parking lot speaks to the lack of traffic and population in Anchorage. Coming from California, the empty streets were a blessing. I would be very curious to see the state of the glacier in the top photo now, if it's even there.