As for ugly, foul tasting, tiger striped dog/chum salmon Ebbie, I've caught 'em, but never fished for them.

I don't think anyone could really say they have "seen" Alaska. It's like the group of blind men describing an elephant. They can only describe the part they feel. Alaska is 2 1/2 times the size of Texas and, if superimposed over the lower 48 would stretch from the Atlantic coast of Georgia to west of the Golden Gate bridge. We have more ocean coast than all the other United States put together. We have one of the largest rain-forests in North America and we have a huge frozen desert that gets very little precipitation at all.

Everyplace I have been has had some uniqueness in geography or vegetation or character that makes it special to be there. Northern Alaska is very bleak and barren, The Aleutian Islands are rarely bone chilling cold, but they are almost always windy and wet, the interior portion of the state has both the hottest and coldest temperatures found up here. We have more than 3 million lakes of 20 acres or larger and we have more active glaciers than anywhere else on earth.

We have no state income tax, no state sales tax, no city sales tax in Anchorage, and we still receive an annual dividend check from the state for our share of the oil wealth that is produced. Last year it amounted to over $900 for each man, woman and child that resides here. There is no place I would have rather raised my five children. Alaska is my home and I love it here.

Mike