For the next few weeks I’m visiting family in Texas! While I’m sure Texas is a fine state full of fine people, I hadn’t even been here an hour when I decided I was going to write this post. Of course I had to start my visit off with a bang 😉 So why exactly is Alaska bigger and better than Texas?

Number 1 – Alaska is actually bigger!

You could actually fit the entirety of Texas into Alaska twice. It is bigger than Texas, Montana and California combined! Alaska is so big the International Date Line had to be bent around it to keep the entire state in the same day. It has 1/5 of the US’s entire land mass. So yeah, Alaska is pretty darn big!

Number 2 – Reindeer sausage y’all

Meat is a staple of life in both Alaska and Texas, but you’d be hard pressed to find reindeer sausage (Amazon) anywhere in Texas. In Alaska, it’s on the menu at every restaurant and you can pick it up at the grocery store. Yum!

Number 3 – Alaskans are friendlier

This is actually the point that started this list. My mom’s car broke down on the way from the airport. We made it off to the side of the road fine, and my mom called AAA. In the meantime, we all got out of the car and stood in the lit driveway of the car dealership we’d pulled into. So we’re four ladies and two babies standing next to a car with the hood up and flashers on. We had about 20-30 cars pass us before AAA got there, without anyone stopping to see if we needed help. Including a police officer who stopped to ask if we’d heard gun shots a half hour before, then took off without so much as asking if we were alright.

In Alaska, most of those cars would have stopped, even if one person had stopped already! How do I know? Because I’ve been helped and stopped to help any time I could. I may be a transplant, but Alaskan manners were quick to rub off on me!

Number 4 – Coffee Stands

Okay, hear me out with this one. Did y’all know that Anchorage actually outdoes Seattle for coffee shops? With 2.8 shops per 10,000 people, it beats Seattle’s 2.5. Alaska actually has more espresso shops per capita than anywhere in America!

So why am I comparing Alaska’s plethora of coffee stands to Texas specifically? As it turns out, Texas doesn’t really have drive through coffee stands. There is the occasional sit down coffee shop, but even those are few and far between. Where is a girl supposed to get her caffeine fix around here?!

Number 5 – In Alaska, the things that want to kill you are big enough to see coming

Yeah, we might have ornery moose and huge bears (Amazon links), but you’ll see those suckers coming at you. Same with anything else out here that might want to eat you, or that thinks you are in its territory. On the other hand, Texas has poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions. I am not enjoying shaking out my shoes before I slip them on, even though its winter. There is stuff in Texas that might kill you just because you didn’t see it!

So Texas. I’m still here for another 3 weeks. Show me why you are awesome!

Tagged : alaska / coffee / texas