Jackson Hole and The Hold Steady

In case you haven't checked your calendar lately, it's January. And in case you're new here, I live in Anchorage. January in Anchorage looks like this.

And sometimes like this.

I'm feeling nostalgic for warmer, brighter days.Let's reminisce together, shall we? Some of my favorite warmer, brighter days were spent here:

Grand Teton National Park

I spent summer 2009 teaching environmental ed in Jackson, WY and it took about 35 seconds for the general Jackson Hole region (Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the whole area) to become my favorite place in the whole world. I could write pages of reasons I love Jackson Hole, fraught with flowery language and extended metaphors. But I still wouldn't do it justice.

A lot of times this was my job:

Sometimes, it was this:

Other times, I wasn't working, so I floated the Snake River

Or made rock art at the Gros Ventre slide

 I got in bison jams

And played kickball:

Long story short, I made no money, but spent everyday in the sun. Worth it. I've been a lot of beautiful places, especially here in Alaska, but nothing compares to staring up at the Tetons from String Lake or the alpenglow on Sleeping Indian.

This week's hot jam is Magazines by The Hold Steady. I love the honesty (and I'm not sure honesty is quite the right word) of The Hold Steady songs. I love that they don't try to glamorize anything. The songs all tell a story, and usually not a  very pretty one, but it's covered up with catching choruses. Genius.

Iditarod and The Hold Steady

This past weekend marked the end of the Fur Rondy festival. And Fur Rondy goes out with a bang – a 1,000 mile, trans-Alaskan bang – the Iditarod.

The Iditarod started in the 1970s to commemorate the importance of the sled dogs in the history of Alaska. Not only Balto leading the other sled dogs to Nome with the diphtheria serum, but also the dogs used in travel, mail delivery, and as part of scouting teams during World War II. Prior to airplanes and snowmobiles (or snow machines, as they are called here) dog sleds were the way to travel around rural Alaska.

The start of the Iditarod in Anchorage is ceremonial, but so fun. They start on 4^th Avenue in downtown Anchorage and eventually make their way 11 miles across town to the Campbell Airstrip.

The dogs are so excited to get going that they have to hook the sleds up to snow machines or the dogs will take off before it’s their turn.

While I enjoy the festivities of the start downtown, my favorite part is going out to the trail as it winds through Anchorage. You can stand right on the trail and cheer as the teams go by. There is something so amazing about knowing that in 8 or 9 days a good portion of the people and dogs are going to be 1,000 miles away, approximately the same distance as LA to Seattle, and they will have gotten there on foot (relatively speaking).

This week's hot jam is Certain Songs by The Hold Steady. The Hold Steady is a gritty indie-rock band from Minneapolis, and I love all their songs so it was really difficult to pick one to feature this week. But nevertheless, I went with Certain Songs. Lead singer, Craig Finn, has a weird talk-singing style and most of the band looks like mid-level government employees (Franz Nicolay, the former keyboardist, looks more like he should be tying ladies to train tracks) but somehow it works.