After a great weekend traveling to Fairbanks and taking the Alaskan Railroad back to Anchorage it was time to get back to work at the simulator building installing the new hardware and software that the company had been working on for about two years. The weather had been mild the first week we were there. There was no snow in Anchorage but the snow on the mountains warned of weather to come. This picture from the front door of the simulator building was taken on October 8^th.

Sure enough, before we had been there a week, it snowed on Wednesday and then again that weekend. This picture of the same parking lot was taken 3 days later on October 11^th. Needless to say the weather also turned colder, particularly for those of us from Arizona.

We took the opportunity to enjoy the snow during our breaks. You can see the snowball coming my way on the blue sky background just above the building roof line.

The following weekend with all the installation complete the gang took the opportunity to explore some  of Anchorage and the surrounding area. Our first stop was Earthquake Park in south east Anchorage near the airport. This park commemorates the 1964 earthquake that devastated much of Anchorage. The park is on the edge of the fault line and you can stand on the side that remained and look out into the bay on the other side of the fault at an area that was completely destroyed.

Then we jumped in the van and headed for Whittier, Alaska halfway between Anchorage and Seward. On the way we stopped at Glacier National Park and visited with a famous ranger. Whittier is an Alaskan seaport that was a major oil tanker loading facility and a fishing port. There are only two ways to get to Whittier, one is by boat and the other is the 2.5 mile tunnel that used to be rail only until a little over a year ago when it was widened to allow one way car traffic OR a train to pass through..

There’s not much in Whittier besides the docks and the rail yard so we found the social center of town at the Anchor Inn.

Inside the Anchor Inn we enjoyed local hospitality and watched some football before heading back to Anchorage. Pictured here are the guys I worked with during the installation. Mark and Roy on the left are the hardware pros and Al on the right is the engineering manager for our group at Luke.

After our break at the Anchor Inn we headed back to Anchorage to finish the football day at the hotel. The weather worsened during the next week and dumped some more snow making it all the more enjoyable to leave once the installation was complete. Back in Phoenix the daily temperatures were still in the 80s. What a great transition.