Mile 238: Bullet Points and Bullet Holes

After a 6 hour bus ride (starting with an hour tour of Anchorage as we picked everyone up), I'm unpacked and getting settled in at Denali. This might turn into a real post later, but for now, it's bullet points again.

The first stop of the day was in Wasilla, famous as the best place in Alaska from which to view Russia. It just looks like your favorite suburb, other than the fact that the businesses are all on 4 acre lots that are mostly gravel.
We stopped at a gas station near Talkeetna that has a Subway right next to it. On the door of the Subway, there's a "Zagat Rated" sticker. I don't know if all Subways have those, but does Zagat really rate fast food megachains? In fairness, there's a good chance it's the best (and only) restaurant within 50 miles.
Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but one of the mile marker signs we passed had three bullet holes through it. In a place with a current or recent war, that's probably a bad sign. Here, a couple of guys probably just got drunk and decided to shoot their guns at road signs. Somehow that seems very Alaskan.
The only wildlife I saw on the 250 mile drive today was a single caribou. This one was apparently on the large side, but it was still smaller than your average white tailed deer, which surprised me.
I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork when checking in at HR here, including stuff about tax withholding. Alaska doesn't have any income taxes, but I have to have income withheld in Ohio. Unfortunately, that also means having municipal income taxes withheld, which in turn means dealing with RITA, the organization that collects for most of the cities in the Cleveland area. To put it succinctly, they are the definition of a byzantine bureaucracy (by the way RITA, I asked for my tax refund 3 months ago, can I have it now?). I was talking to one of the guys at HR here, and apparently they are hated even in Alaska. I'm almost in awe that they're so incompetent that they have a reputation almost 4,000 miles away.
The internet here is really spotty (not that that's unexpected, this is rural Alaska after all). I got a few good pictures from the highway that I'll post if I can, but getting a connection that doesn't cut out every few minutes is difficult.
Sunset tonight is at 11:16 PM. Sunrise tomorrow is 4:42 AM.