NEW! 
Washington Travel Magazine is our newest sister travel magazine site. This premier edition has a Fort Vancouverhistory video article, horsepacking the Washington Cascades Pacific Crest Trail book excerpt, Experience WA Outdoors column featuring Bill Goodwin's Spring Fishing Southwest WA., and more. This site has been published using a new widescreen format that automatically fits your browser window size. Enjoy!
Please Excuse A Little Editorializing… (click picture to continue on to the travel videos)
Since our web log stats show us to be very popular when a search query is “Alaska Trivia,” here is a new one for the many ‘outsiders’ who seem to be putting off their lifelong dream of visiting Alaska due to high gas prices.
Question: Who has consistently higher prices? Chicago? Or, Anchorage?
Answer: Checking with oil company manipulations of making more, by selling less, when just checking online, Chicago commuters on Federally subsidized freeways are paying $3.79 per gallon, whereas a resident of Las Anchorage is only paying $2.97 per gallon.
Perhaps another point of trivia interest is that Illinois drivers pay 19¢ per gallon Federal Excise Tax, and an additional 6.5% sales tax. Alaska drivers pay absolutely no sales tax, but somehow are stuck with 8ç per gallon Federal Excise Tax, when we have no Federally Funded freeways, nor for that matter any US Highways (The Alcan: US 97) since statehood.
Sorry. I really did not mean to sandbag you search engine newsstand customer query, when you were probably just looking for an escape to an untroubled corner of the world far away from terrorist threats and bad economic news. The reality TV survival show here is Alaskan owned businesses hundreds of miles away from ports trying to compete with a Wall-Mart style takeover by a big box foreign cruise ship resorts on a monopoly board (stock symbol, CCL) that only leaves 35¢ out of all Alaskan vacation dollars, in state.
With only a short season to pay for mortgages on some very unique Alaskan B&Bs, when the price of gas price spikes for no good reason, as now, know the small independent businessman who needs to book rooms for September, or has committed to a pre-season negotiated a fixed price for flightseeing, suffers.
Remember oil producing Alaska is somewhat outside the control of the OPEC multinational oil oligopolies, which is why ANWR exploration was rejected when Congress was being picketed with posters carrying signs that read conflicting messages of, “No oil drilling on our public lands!” and “No American Blood for Cheap Iraqi Oil.”
Obviously Congress is more interested in re-election funding by PAC support from multinational corporations as Halliburton, than correcting a long time insult to Territorial, and then State of Alaska businesses, as the Jones Act. This unholy alliance of big oil, big government, and big city environmentalists is why Cruise-Mart hires migrant workers as Alaska “expert” tour guides from Loss Vegas, and we are dependant on exporting crude oil instead of using more global warming sensitive natural gas for transportation in the “lower 48”.
Having killed a buffalo for it’s haunch and tongue and hide, we are wasting reserves by flaring into the atmosphere a resource which National Geographic Magazine projects overall as having a 300 year supply. This from an alterernative fuel source that emits 70 percent less carbon monoxide, 89 percent less non-methane organic gas, and 87 percent less NOx than traditional gasoline powered vehicles.
Our sister e-travel publication www.RVTravelMagazine.com is reporting panicked e-mails asking what the price of gas driving through Canada (paralleling an exhisting natural gas pipeline) might be. We don’t know! No online reporting system even wants to document last season’s highs of being over $5, or even $6 per gallon for those whose RV tanks do not give them a 500-mile range. We survive our semi-retired snowbird wintertime flight by not doing the math converting US$ to CDN$, and litters to US gallons. Can’t afford to drive an RV 5,000 miles round-trip, then fly north and rent one.
The good news for travelers is all of this has led to some incredible bargains, or at least upgrades — according to Ty Murray, my talented grandson photographer on assignment for www.AlaskaTravelTours.com. Those adventurous enough to get off the cruise ship tour bus (sounds a oxymoron doesn’t it?) are in for value added adventures.
If you do go north this season go somewhere way out of your way to help support an endangered species of uniquely Alaskan birdmen. If flightseeing on a pre-negioated cruise ship package, kick in a little extra to help an operator survive what has been an absolutely stunning increase in gas prices in the bush.
I mention pilots a lot as our web logs, and recorded search engine enquiries always top the list with something to do with bush flying or float planes. For them I dug way done into my files for a shot of a dog tired Don Sheldon refueling 23 Zulu with 80/87 out of a square-five into his homemade chamois strainer funnel. This is sort of why he survived 28 B-17 missions in the Eighth over Nazi Germany, and another 28-years pioneering flying “into” Denali (otherwise know to friends of a jerkwater Senator from Ohio as Mt. McKinley) before dieing of colon caner.
