Welcome to Naknek (Where Being Unclassy Is Classy)

Mom and I were excited to leave Anchorage. Anchorage, though it has its perks which we will go back and enjoy for a few more days before coming home, is not Real Alaska. According to Andy, many lifelong Anchoragites have no idea what the rest of their state is like or how bush villagers really live. 

After waiting in the airport in Anchorage for a couple of hours, Mom and I flew to Naknek to meet up with Andy, who was already there. Andy, Wendy, and the kids took a bush plane through SEND, while Mom and I took a commercial flight. 

This commercial flight was much different than any of our previous flights. The plane was incredibly small, loud, and informal. We flew over wide expanses of treeless tundra dotted with countless lakes, all different sizes, shapes, and shades of blue, green, and gray. (I have pictures of this for a later post.)

When we rumbled our way onto the runway in Naknek, we saw a ramshackle building which we soon discovered was the airport. 

Here's a view from the inside (it's just the one room).

Here are the chairs (the holes dress them up a bit, and no one's bothered by the one that's missing.)

Have a taste of the tundra! I walked through it a bit on our drive back to Andy and Wendy's new house to take a snapshot of some cottonfluff-flowers (also to be included in a later post, and yes, that's the Deborah-fied name for them). The tundra is springy--it's like stepping into a giant grassy marshmallow and sinking and sinking without getting wet. In these two pictures, you can see smoke rising on the horizon if you look carefully enough. It's been dry in these parts, and wildfires are cropping up all over the place. They're not bad near Naknek, but they're still burning here and there.

I'll be posting a whole bunch of pictures of Naknek all in a jumble in later posts. It's one of those places you can only peel back one layer at a time.