Whittier, Alaska + Scranton, Pennsylvania
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Alison is obsessed with her new Ninja blender. It is significantly improving her morning smoothie game. If you need tips on how to make your shakes supreme, she’s now your go-to gal. Lulu is obsessed with Among Us...she’s a little late to the game but better late than never, right? She prefers to play it with people in the room, because accidentally out loud reactions are oh-so-entertaining.
Alison is on a kitchen gear improvement kick, and is wishing for some cutting boards. She wants the kind that tells you very clearly which one is for meat and one is for vegetables, etc. This set would work just great! Lulu loves Goldbelly because of their contribution to our #thankyoufive initiative, and that love is leading her to wish for their subscription boxes. It’s like a curated mystery surprise box full of tasty treats delivered right to your door.
Lulu is headed to Whittier, Alaska, a “town under one roof”, as many a reporter has described it. This town was a secret World War II substation, Just getting there is a unique experience as you’ll have to go through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, which is the longest highway tunnel in the world. It is the only way to access this town of around 300 people by land. It's also a one-lane tunnel, only running in each direction at specific times of day, and it is completely shut down at night. There is one large building on the edge of the town, Begich Towers, a former army barracks where upwards of 75% of the population reside. Begich Towers boasts everything one might need when escaping the 60mph winter winds. They have a grocery store, a doctor's office, a laundromat, a police station… there's even a church in the building. There is a school connected to the building by an underground tunnel. The top two floors are owned by one woman who has the "best interior-designed condos for rent in the whole town".
Lulu is staying at said June's Whittier Condo Suites. She booked the Presidential Suite, which features living room with a leather sofa, a large kitchen, 2 dining tables, a bedroom with queen bed and a full bath with shower. This suite offers a panoramic ocean and city view, and has binoculars on hand to catch whale sightings in the sound!
A lot of what Whittier has to offer is adventures in its winter wonderland. Deep sea fishing charters, whale-watching tours, and the like are the go-to activity. Basically anything you do here - at this time of year, anyways - requires a seriously warm fit. Lulu braves the chill, weather-appropriately outfitted in this Goldbergh camouflage-print down ski suit, that cost her a cool $1059 USD from Net-A-Porter.com.
She is headed to the Lazy Otter Cafe where you can get a drip coffee with a side of souvenirs. Next she ventures to the Prince William Sound Museum, which is housed in a one-story building that also operates as a hotel, a grocery store, and a laundromat. Apparently what it lacks in size or sparkle in more than makes up for in attention-to-Alaskan-history-detail. You can learn all about the PWS area's military history throughout the Cold War and WWII via 32 exhibit installations. After an informative morning at the museum, Lulu heads to the Oceanfront Cafe for lunch. It is only open from May-September, so if you are there during these months, make sure you try their salmon chowder or the reindeer sausage hot dog, both of which have Lulu's mouth watering.
Next is a private, custom boat tour of the sounds through Lazy Otter Charters. You are able to choose-your-own-adventure, whether that’s the thrilling experience of cruising among the numerous glaciers in College Fjord or cruising the heart of the sound in search of humpback whales! Or maybe both?
On her boat tour Lulu is going to find a glacier cave that feels sturdy. She’s going to create the hottest nightclub in Whittier, Alaska for one night only. With that icy backdrop, she’s thinking this Chauvet DJ Freedom Par quad-4 wireless colored light setup will set the tone quite nicely. Not wanting real loud music to disrupt the structural integrity of the glacier her and her invited guests are partying in, Lulu decides to rent these silent disco party headphones with the live video DJ option. Everyone is listening to the same music, but it’s in headphones!
Wanting to keep the party going and her guests fueled, Lulu is having dinner catered in. And by dinner, she means drinks. She orders enough Bang Power Punch energy drinks for fifty people, and decides to get enough vodka to pair with it. These club goers are in for a treat, as she purchases two $2,000 bottles of Alize Swarovski studded vodka, #14 on this list of the 14 most expensive vodkas in the world. This is going to be the party that can’t stop, won’t stop!
Though The Office is set in the fictional Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania, it was mostly filmed in L.A. So you can’t go find the infamous office building. The show does use some footage from Scranton, and makes many references to actual places in the area. Alison could have followed this The Office Road Trip map to see actual filming locations and restaurants mentioned… like the Electric City Sign and Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe. Or she could have holed up in her Airbnb’s movie room and watched all of the episodes now streaming on Peacock. Instead she wandered around some local haunts, stayed in the best Airbnb we’ve ever seen, and engaged with The Office in a new way (stay tuned/keep scrolling)!
Alison booked a couple of nights at the Blakeslee Luxury Castle in the Greens, an Airbnb whose 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms only take up 20% of the house! There is 6000 square feet of living space in this house, with unique features like an indoor swimming pool and an indoor jacuzzi situated beneath an expansive moon roof! There's a bar, multiple living rooms, air hockey and pool tables, and a movie room! There's an outdoor pool too, the setting of which is regularly refreshed, as they "try to change the outside furniture and pool floats from time to time keeping the current trend in mind". There's also a sauna, a fire pit, a lotus pond. This unique retreat has space for up to 16 people, and costs around $2500-2800 a night after taxes and fees, depending on the season.
Alison’s first stop is the Electric City Trolley Museum which has exhibits with models and an interactive trolley for kids. The museum also features a working trolley car that travels a line that starts at the museum and passes several historical sites. She’s thinking she’ll enjoy a breakfast pastry and some coffee while on the trolley. Perhaps in a World’s Best Boss mug?
Sticking with her trains-and-food M.O. Alison heads for a special booking she made with the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society. For nearly 100 years, the Erie Lackawanna Railroad was known for serving fresh, gourmet meals to its passengers. Today, the ELDCPS aims to preserve the history of railway travel. The society has restored three dining cars, of which you can arrange tours by contacting the society directly. In addition, they offer train rides with meals at special events throughout the year. Alison is hoping they will be down with giving her a short ride and serving her brunch for $1,000 USD. Since she is completely making this experience up, she gets to imagine the menu as well… which for her means ribs, biscuits, and home fries.
For a unique afternoon, she heads to the “Best birthday party venue in the Pocono Scranton Wilkes-Barre area of Northest Pennsylvania”, the Houdini Museum. She books a private event that starts with a room full of carnival-like games and video games before the stage show with nationally known magicians and live animals! After the show you go to the party room with a jeweled "throne" surrounded by birthday and magic decorations where there are drinks, party snacks, pizza, ice cream, cotton candy, and balloon animals waiting for you!
She can't remember whether it's Pizza by Alfredo or Alfredo's Pizza Cafe that is the preferred dining spot of The Office crew, so she heads to Ipanema Grille for dinner instead. It’s a Brazilian steakhouse, called a Churrascaria, which involves something like a dozen combinations of fire roasted meats carved and served table side. She is going for the all-you-can-eat menu option, as well as several rounds of caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil which is similar to a mojito but made with the Brazilian liquor cachaça.
After dinner its back to the "castle", where she plans to spend the evening curled up with The Office in more ways than one. She holes up in her Airbnb’s movie room and watches several episodes now available on Peacock.
She also gets very familiar with the Cameo app. It's an app/website that allows celebrities to send personalized video messages to fans, for a price. Alison’s going to purchase video messages from eight stars of The Office -
Todd Packer (David Koechner)
David Wallace (Andy Buckley)
Oscar (Oscar Nunez)
Jan (Melora Hardin)
Meredith (Kate Flannery)
Stanley (Leslie David Baker)
Toby (Paul Lieberstein)
...and (in her opinion) best for last, Kevin (Brian Baumgartner), who was the top earner on the app in 2020, creating over 5,000 cameo videos, raking in over one million dollars, and making The Office fans around the world, like Alison, very happy.
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