Alaska Answers

Q. We’re coming up to Anchorage on June 9th to fly out of Merrill Field for a week of fishing. We’ll need an overnight there. It occurred to me you could probably suggest a bed and breakfast. Something close to Merrill Field would be great. Thanks, Mel

A. Sure, I can help you, Mel. It isn’t a Bed & Breakfast really, but there is a motel called the Merrill Field Inn and it is located right across from Merrill Field, so I can’t get you much closer than that! I’ve never stayed there myself; however, I did call the Anchorage Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to make sure it was on their list of approved places to stay. It was. They serve a continental breakfast in the lobby each morning. Here is their info:

Merrill Field Inn
420 Sitka Street
Telephone is (907) 276-4547
There is a # for out of state also – 1-800-898-4547 With tax, rooms are 128.80 a night, and I believe that is with a 10% discount if you tell them a local resident, Bonnie Jennings, at Wasilla, recommended them. You can check them out at www.merrillfieldinn.com

The other thing you can do, Mel, is to look up www.anchorage.net on the web. That is the convention and visitor’s bureau site. You can click on Anchorage lodging and get a list of bed and breakfasts. I believe some of them have site maps so you can pick something close to where you want to be.

Hope this helps and that you have a wonderful, wonderful time and catch a fish so big you’ll need proof to make the folks back home believe you! -Bonnie J.

Q. Alex wants to know, What is Alaska’s biggest resource?

A. Perhaps I should look this up, but I really think I know. It would be oil as first, probably, and then military spending, tourism and fishing. Not sure in which order those would be, but they are all big.

It was 1968 when the biggest oilfield in North America was discovered in Prudhoe Bay. The oil was found on state land, so that meant that overnight the state was very wealthy, and remains so to this day; although it’s unlikely that such a large strike will ever be found again. I said unlikely. Not impossible. Discovering oil meant the building of a 9 billion dollar pipeline, and that provided the means to affluent living for thousands of people.

Our military population figures largely in boosting our economy, even with the downsizing of some bases. Quite a few military families, upon completing their military service, opt to stay and live in the state, getting jobs in the private sector and continuing to input the economy.

In the summer, we host over a million and a half tourists. Many private citizens, as well as businesses, profit greatly from this influx of visitors. I have two friends with bed and breakfaats in their homes and they make enough in the summer to totally pay their mortgages for the year round. And one of them even added a nice motor home in which they tour the lower 48 in the winter.

Our bountiful waters produce over 6 billion pounds of seafood yearly, so that is a big thing. Especially after the studies showing the superiority of wild Alaska salmon over farmed salmon, our salmon sales, already great, really leaped upward.

Hope this helps, Alex. Take care, Bonnie J.

Q. What are some foods popular in, & possibly particular to Alaska? -Carol

A. Well, now, this is a fun one. Where do I begin? I think in the fine restaurants you will find featured: halibut, salmon, king crab, most any sea food. Since wild game can’t be sold commercially, you won’t find that when eating out (other than maybe reindeer sausage) but if you want a neat experience, wangle an invite to a common home and you might find moose, caribou, and bear on the menu.

Alaska doesn’t have much in the way of fruit trees – although a couple varieties of smaller sized apple grow here, but wild berries are very plentiful. We have picked currants, blueberries, salmon berries, watermelon berries, lowbush and high bush cranberries, and moss berries to name a few. There is nothing so beautiful as a home canned jar of wild currant syrup. Unless it is a stack of sourdough hotcakes to go with it.

A lot of rural kitchens have a pot of sourdough starter waiting for it’s call into ‘action’. Some starters go back a century supposedly. Bread, muffins and hotcakes are made from it. The old gold miners got the nickname of ’sourdoughs’ because they used so much of it. It is said that they even took the pot to bed with them on really cold nights to keep it from freezing. Some of those sub zero nights were referred to as ‘one dog nights’ or ‘two dog nights’ depending on how many dogs you had to have in bed with you to keep the sourdough pot and yourself warm!

When our boys were young and running a trapline out in Copper River country, we ate all kinds of things. We tried to fully use whatever they found in their traps – so our dinner table sometimes featured strange meats such as porcupine, or lynx! One thing for sure it would be very hard to starve to death in Alaska.

Most of the bed and breakfasts in Alaska try to feature uniquely Alaskan goodies.