Costco and the Alaska Native Heritage Centre

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 – Day 34

I was at Costco’s door this morning before opening  at 10:00 AM, hoping to be the first in line to purchase new tires for the truck.  Apparently a few dozen other Alaskans were also shopping this morning.  My efforts to move through the crowd were frustrated by either old(er) men or women with kids.  I arrived at the tire sales desk to find three people had beaten me there.  Finally when I was served and had my four tires loaded on a hand truck I was able to get to the cash register.  I had only one person ahead of me and things were starting to look good.  The cashier had me checked through in minutes and it was time to pay.  Swipe the debit card – once, twice, three times – The cashier pointed out the ATM machine.  After trying to get the full amount out of the machine; it finally hit me that this machine gives only $400 daily maximum.  About half of what I needed.  Fortunately I was able to get a VISA cash advance and I was back to the cash register just as the formerly pleasant cashier was calling over a supervisor to deal with me.  I dropped my wad of $20 bills on the counter and she started counting them.  I looked at the line-up of customers which had now grown in size exponentially.  Not too many happy faces or allies in that group.  Finally I was finished and I took off at a quick pace to the tire installation bay that was conveniently located on the other side of the building.  So I’m standing there patiently waiting with my tires at the open bay doors thinking the nice tire installation dude was going to come over and see me.  By now the other customer whom I had left in the dust at the Tire Sales desk had arrived, left his hand truck and walked in the side door to the installation service desk.  Being the quick witted fellow I am I followed him in and got the next appointment time of 1:00 PM.

When I finally got back to the trailer we had to spend the next couple of hours on the phone trying to get some banking issues resolved.  Then we were finally off to the Alaskan Native Heritage Centre.  This centre celebrates the different native cultural groups in Alaska. The centre is located on a 26 acre treed site just north east of the city.  We watched a dance troop and listened to some speakers telling about their cultures. They presented a film about the carving of the central totem pole and the significance of the characters on it. 

While we were going through the exhibit area an elder, Yupik woman offered us some whale blubber – a delicacy in her culture. It is served with the outer layer of skin attached to the blubber and it is lightly salted.  The skin is a dark charcoal grey while the blubber appears as a translucent white. It didn’t taste like anything I had ever experienced before.  It was quite “fishy” tasting which surprised me. It was extremely chewy something like chewing gristle or a rubber band.  It takes a lot of energy to chew this long enough in order to swallow and it takes even more energy to keep it down.   I think if they could maybe deep fry it like pork rinds it would be saleable in mainstream America.  Anyway, Janet was denied this culinary pleasure as she snuck off to find a hidden corner and would not offend this elder woman.

After the blubber episode we then proceeded outside to the cultural villages. Each group has set up a representative dwelling of their particular group. This really gives you a good idea of the way the people lived prior to contact with Europeans.  Closing time caught us still well short of visiting all dwellings so we tried to make arrangements to return the following day. 

We drove downtown and parked the truck to tour the downtown area on foot.  Whether or not there is a lot of crime in the city I’m not sure but every where you go in Anchorage there seems to be a substantial police presence. Anchorage has a population of over 250,000 and is the largest city in Alaska.  (As I am writing this I have noticed that street cleaning equipment has passed by this street that we are parked near at least 8 times.  We had also noticed that road construction starts about 7:00 PM and goes through the night (it is better described as twilight) till 6:00 AM.  This causes minimal disruption to daytime traffic.