In some ways Anchorage feels like any other US city, with wide streets set out in a grid pattern, but look up and there are snow-covered mountains in every direction. Sea-planes fly overhead, snow-mobiles sit in backyards and houses have moose fences. Alaska is huge, over twice the size of any other US state or, in European terms, larger than France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. And it is remote, it took us over three hours to fly here from Seattle, the nearest city in continental USA. There are few tourists so many locals want to chat. A police officer checks that we are not lost and then recommends a good coffee shop and places for dinner; the mail man assures us that the 'dead end' does lead to the shore; a couple who are gardening
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