Alaska light illuminates the vast geography of
mountain, glacier, and ocean with a sometimes dim, sometimes luminous radiance
that beckons travelers to explore. In the land of the midnight sun, moose,
caribou, bears, and whales take full advantage of the long summer days, and
visitors too can reap the benefits by fitting twice the activities into one
twenty-four hour period. When darkness falls on Alaska in July it is not the
sudden affair that it is in other parts of the world, it sort of creeps across
the landscape as if it were drawing a thin shade across the sun. A dusky type
of night rolls in around midnight, makes a valiant effort to thwart the light,
and then finally gives up at the ungodly hour of 4am. Sleeping under these
conditions is an art, and a skill that most tourists just give up on
perfecting.
Our days spent in Alaska were jam packed with
activity; there would be time to sleep when we got home. We explored the state
by float plane, car, boat, RV, and of course by foot. Everywhere we went we
were treated to wide-open views, from jagged mountain peaks painted pink by
the last rays of the sun, to sparkling blue lakes lined along the shores with
puffy white Alaska cotton, the possibilities for exploration were endless.
Alaska is truly the last frontier.
Even the flight into Anchorage was stunning; flying
over the grandeur of Wrangell-St. Elias yields views of snow covered mountains
and rivers of glaciers flowing out in all directions, and we were no strangers
to mountains or glaciers, but nothing we had ever seen prepared us for the
scale of Alaska’s natural treasures.
After landing in Anchorage we checked into the
Hampton Inn, a wonderful hotel with a great continental breakfast, and then we
set out to explore the city. Our first stop was The Outback Steakhouse, it is
a tradition for us to eat at this restaurant on every vacation, and then we
stopped in the local Wal-Mart to shop for gifts. A lot of people don’t think
about Wal-Mart as a gift shop, but most of the stores found in larger tourist
cities have a department specifically set aside for gifts. We have found that
the same gifts can be bought here at a much lower price than you find in the
dedicated gift shops. Anchorage was no exception and we found great gifts,
postcards, and books at affordable prices.
