Alaska Man Monday - Photos, Racks, and Tourists

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With several hard frosts behind us, the last leaves are dropping from the poplars and the birch. The bears will be heading up into the hills to den up for winter, and the moose will be moving back down into the lower country to wait for the snows – and to eat our landscaping plants.

Soon the Great Land will pull a blanket of white over itself and sleep until spring.

In the meantime, though, the Anchorage Daily News has given us a wonderful compilation of fall photography.

The colors! The colors!

These photos are from the Anchorage area and south-central Alaska; Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city, and the Anchorage metropolitan area is home to nearly half of the state’s population. You wouldn’t know it by looking at some of these – but that’s what it’s like on the city’s fringes. Downtown and up by the Merrill Field Airport, where a massive homeless encampment seems to grow, that’s another story. These homeless enclaves, as I’ve pointed out before, are not only messy and threats to public health, here in Alaska, even in Anchorage, there is the added risk of attracting bears.

Alaska Man Score: 5 moose nuggets. I could look at these all day. Alternatively, I could look out the window. But, I admit, the Anchorage Daily News presents more variety.

Now then, there are thieves, and there are thieves. This kind of stealing, though, is very Alaskan: Stolen Moose Racks.

An Anchorage couple had their newly acquired moose racks stolen from their Campbell Airstrip Road home shortly after returning from a hunt and are now asking for info on the heist.

According to Colette Muller and Michael Blahut, two people navigated through a wooded area near their home and stole the two racks early Wednesday morning. Blahut had just returned from a hunting trip near the Yukon River on Tuesday night.

“One was 71.5 [inches] and another one was approximately 62, we didn’t get the tape on them,” he said of the large moose racks he acquired. “That’s not the priority, right? You know, normal priority’s the meat, secondary priority is [the antlers], of course, and we cherish those things.

State law, I would point out, requires the removal of all edible portions of a game animal before removing antlers, hides, or anything else. That’s the law in every state as far as I’m aware.

Alaska Man Score: 4.75 moose nuggets for Colette and Michael; good job with the moose, but clearly you should have secured the antlers. But then, hindsight is always 20-20. We hope the moose racks are found and returned intact.

Finally, some news for the folks who like a little peace and quiet on the weekends – No cruise ships on Saturdays?

Imagine one day a week in summertime Juneau when there are no large cruise ships floating in the harbor, no tourists bustling down the docks and no buses driving people to the Mendenhall Glacier.

If Proposition 2 is passed by Juneau voters this fall, that could become a reality.

The proposition, known as Ship Free Saturdays, asks voters whether to ban all cruise ships that carry 250 or more passengers from visiting on Saturdays and on the Fourth of July as soon as next summer. Throughout the spring, supporters gathered over 2,300 signatures to get it on the ballot.

I guess I can understand the motivations of Juneau residents on this, although I’ve never visited Alaska’s capital yet. We have been to Seward when the cruise ships were docked, and it puts a pretty good strain on the town’s goods and services. It would seem that one day’s respite isn’t too much to ask.

Alaska Man Score: 5 moose nuggets. Good on Juneau for exercising their right of self-determination.

Now, then, let’s have a look at a recent lovely fall morning – and a view of a local landmark.