I’m not a drinker. I can probably tell you the details of each time I’ve drank in my life — and it’s less than 10 fingers worth of times — so I’m not exactly an expert in fine liquor. Yet even with my limited knowledge, I still have my standards, and I just don’t think I could bring myself to drink a bottle of vodka that is the flavor of salmon. Yeah, as in the fish. That just doesn’t sound appealing to me at all.

It very well may be the most amazing liquor in the world, it just doesn’t sound good. It’s like those people who mix bacon and chocolate, it might be good, but it just sounds disgusting.

Salmon flavor vodka, yeah just not for me. Sounds perfect for gifts though. I love sending out gifts that seem to represent Alaska, and what represents Alaska more than fresh salmon eh? If you want a taste for yourself, you might have to come to Alaska to do it. I’m not sure how many places this is available yet, other than the Permafrost Alaskan Vodka distillery. And who knows, I just may be being too hard on them, they do in fact have one of the highest rated vodkas according to the Beverage Tasting Institute, their Permafrost flavor scored a 96 out of 100 rating, one of only 4 vodkas with a score that high since the institute founded in 1994.

Alaska has recently started a state lottery — which is going through it’s own growing pains — but before that, the only thing us Alaskan’s were able to pin our hopes and dreams on was this quaint little competition called the Nenana Ice Classic.

Ne-na-what?

Yes, the Nenana Ice Classic, better known as “guess when the ice melts”. Yup, you heard right, we actually have a contest up here to guess when the ice melts — and you win money if you guess right! — so it isn’t just a psychotic mind game we play after 7 months of being trapped indoors by the snow.

But what exactly is it, and how did it start?

[The Nenana Ice Classic], a popular competition to guess the date and time of the Nenana River ice breakup each spring–began in 1917 among Alaska Railroad workers.

Large grooves are cut into the frozen Tanana River ice about 300 feet from shore. Volunteers lend their muscles to pull on ropes to stand a wooden tripod upright. Holes are drilled in the ice, allowing water to seep upwards, filling in the grooves to freeze the tripod in place.

A watchtower erected next to the tripod holds the official clock of the most recent breakup, and provides a “photo opportunity” for visitors while they wait for the ice to move.

Once the ice has thawed to the point where walking on it is no longer safe, a wire is attached from the watchtower on shore to the top of the tripod, and rigged up to a clock mechanism so that the clock will be stopped when the tripod moves 100 feet. Watchmen monitor from the time the clock is activated until the ice has gone out. A siren will alert the townspeople to the tripod’s first movement.

When the tripod trips the clock, spring has officially arrived, and Interior Alaska’s rivers are once more navigable. And someone is a lot richer!

So you have to guess the exact date and time this thing comes tumbling down. I mean it isn’t exactly as random as most “lottery” events, there is a bit of science involved. If you walk outside and if feels pretty warm, well that ice might be melting soon!

I know it probably sounds like I’m making all this up, but it’s real. Honest. We live in Alaska after all, we make our fun any way we can. And hey, the jackpot last year was $283,723. I wouldn’t mind a piece of that.

I find it more than a little ironic that Sarah Palin is going to be hosting a reality TV show based on, and in, Alaska. After all, she basically abandoned us Alaskans in search of greener pastures. All the while claiming that she was only doing what was “best” for Alaska.  I know it would be easy to crack a joke and say, well, getting rid of Sarah really was best for Alaska! — but you would have to be an Alaskan to really feel the sense of resentment this whole sad affair has stirred in (most of) our hearts.

She didn’t quit her job as governor of Alaska to do what was best for Alaska.  Sarah Palin quit her job as governor to do what was best for Sarah Palin.  The really twisted part of all this is the fact that since she left she has continued to try and use Alaska to her own personal benefit, always telling stories about how she’s just this down-to-earth Alaskan soccer mom;  or she’s just a rugged Alaskan hunter;  or she’s just a hard working Alaskan fisherwoman.

Give me a break.

You quit.  You left.  You’ve lost the right to whore the state of Alaska out for your own personal crusade, Mrs. Palin.  I mean it takes some balls of solid steel to do what she’s doing.  Imagine a man leaving his wife for a hotter, younger woman, then nominating the woman he just abandoned for a Mother Of The Year award. Oh and then writing a book about how he left his wife, and going to her house to give her a signed copy of it.

Yeah, that is what Sarah is doing to Alaska.

She needs to stop pretending to be this great representative of my state. I don’t care if she sleeps with a fresh salmon in bed next to her and rides a moose around the country on her book tour, she just isn’t an Alaskan to me anymore.

Alaska teens’ pizza heist brings out SWAT team – washingtonpost.com.

Honestly, I swear this wasn’t me.

On behalf of The NJ Tourist Bureau, we want to thank the State of Alaska. For years, we at the New Jersey Tourist Bureau thought it would be impossible for our home state to lose the designation, “most screwed up state in the Union.” We’ve grown tired of jokes about our state being the armpit of America. The mafia jokes, the turnpike quips, the accusations that we smell bad or may have previously spent time as New Jersey’s governor before being forced to resign due to corruption. Well, no more.

We write to you to inform you that, thanks to Sarah Palin, you are officially more of a joke than the Garden State.

Oh this is just sad. What’s worse, is that I think a lot of people actually think this way.  It’s true, if you think “Alaska”, you now think “Sarah Palin”. It is a stain that will never vanish. Click the link below to read the rest of this rather sadly amusing post.

Chris Holt: Alaska is the New-New Jersey.

We have this peculiar weather condition here in Alaska that I always end up calling “frozen fog”. I’m sure it isn’t unique to Alaska, but this is the first place I’ve ever lived where I’ve experienced it. Now I’m not sure the exact scientific name. My mom calls is “hoarfrost”. I’ve heard others here refer to it as “rime frost”. Whatever the name may be, it is a very beautiful condition. The trees in town turn white. Almost pure white. Not the sort of clumpy look you might imagine by snow piling up on tree branches. Just imagine one of those fake white Christmas Trees that a place like Wal-mart sells. Yeah, it almost looks like that.

But real.

We’ve had four straight days of foggy weather here in Anchorage, a very dense, heavy sort of fog — and with weather in the low teens and below — it’s freezing to everything it touches. Every tree in the city looks like it was made special just for the holiday season. You would almost have to see it in person to really get an appreciation for how beautiful it is. I tried to capture it a little bit in some photos, but they don’t do the effect the justice it deserves.

Here it is though, for your viewing pleasure.

[Show as slideshow]

Well if you are one of those people who dream of a white Christmas, it seems you should live in Alaska.  According to the National Climatic Data Center, based on collected data from 1988 to 2005, Fairbanks, Alaska has a 100% possibility of seeing snow on Christmas day.  Anchorage (where I live) is pegged at 90%.  Some other cities:

• Fairbanks: 100 percent
• Duluth: 97 percent
• Anchorage: 90 percent
• Spokane: 70 percent
• Boise: 30 percent
• Seattle: 8 percent
• Portland: 1 percent
• Phoenix: 1 percent

See the “snow probability map” HERE.

“It’s too cold to snow.“  Those are words I’ve used countless times.  On certain days and at certain temperatures, that phrase is an undeniable truth — in my humble opinion.  Scientifically speaking though there is no such thing as “too cold to snow”.  The details don’t interest me, to be honest.  I’m no scientist or climatologist.  I’ve been in Alaska for about 10 years now, and one thing I can say without question is that the colder it gets, the less snow that falls.

And of course when I think of “snow”, I think of an accumulation of the stuff that I would have to move around with the power of a shovel and a glass of hot chocolate.  I really don’t much care about a light dusting.

We are finally on the climb out of a week or two of frigid temps here in Anchorage, where I don’t think it ever got warmer than 10 degrees.  And we got no snow during that stretch.  Now that the temps are rising again — if you can call 20′s and 30′s “rising” — and sure enough we get a couple inches last night, with the weather calling for snow every day for the next week or so.  So yeah, perhaps ‘too cold to snow’ isn’t technically true, but it is true enough for me that it makes no difference.  It will be my back aching after shoveling this stuff up, not some scientist in a nice warm lab somewhere.

I still think this should be our state flower.  In the summer when these start to bloom and they completely fill up the fields and line the sides of the road — Alaska almost never looks more beautiful than that.

Mt. Redoubt Eruptions – What Effect If Any on the Summer? Winter? « Watts Up With That?.

Starting on March 22, a series of major eruptions have taken place from Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The biggest exceeded 65,000 feet in height. More than a dozen eruptions as high as 60,000 have followed the first week alone. Activity may continue for weeks or months based on the volcano’s history.

An extremely interesting article detailing the effects and / or results of volcanic eruptions on the rest of the country and / or world.

Click HERE to read, or the link above.