Tour Diary – Anchorage, AK (Sept 5, 2013)

Alaska is far, eh? I walked out our front door at 4:30am, Pete and I went to our studio, loaded our equipment, hooked up with brother John, drove to the airport, paid Air Canada $700 for our excess baggage, flew the five hours to Vancouver, ate a really average fish taco in the airport, flew another three hours to Anchorage and stumbled in to the hotel….a nifty little fourteen hour travel day. We were last in Alaska about seven years ago and as we wandered the streets of Anchorage, looking for food, memories of the city began to gurgle up. It's much like most cities in the far north, functional. But the one thing about Anchorage that puts it a cut above most northern cities is the abundance of brew pubs. I had a great IPA cask ale at dinner….all is good in the world once again. This short, week long tour is one of those welcome oddities on our tour schedule. We look upon this sort of thing more as an adventure than a tour. This particular one has been put together by our friends at Roots On The Rails, who also promoted the cross-Canada train trip that we did a few years ago. The way this one works is that about forty guests pay a lot of their hard earned dollars for an Alaska adventure and we and our music are a part of that adventure. It all starts in Anchorage tomorrow night with a show at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium (it's a shared bill with our friends Over The Rhine, who are at the end of their own Alaska adventure). On Saturday we all climb aboard a bus and drive 3 hours to Talkeetna which sits just South of Denali Park. During the day I will search for rainbow trout and at night we will do another show at a local venue. Then on Sunday the adventure really begins with a long journey in to Denali Park and a two night stay at a remote lodge in the middle of the park and an acoustic Junkies performance. We then catch a train back to Anchorage and start the long journey home. So stay tuned….hopefully I'll be posting lots of pics with me holding up big fish, Margo being chased by a bear, Pete riding a moose, Al sleeping among the Musk Ox and Jeff examining wolf poop. It should be fun.