Alaska Tripping

Welcome to my first blog! (sorry for the primitiveness, I'll get better)

So, here I am in Alaska. Yes, I finally made it to this beautiful state. I suppose this being my first time blogging, it will take me some time to learn the ropes so, please bear with me.

On Sept. 20, I left the bay area for Anchorage where I rented a car and set out for a one week tour eventually, heading to Fairbanks in search of the Aurora Borealis.

As I settled in and tried to get my bearings in this strange little town of Anchorage, I was trying to think of a place that it reminded me of and all I could come up with is Reno? Yeah, it's a very small town with just a few high rises but actually, spreads out to be much bigger than I thought. The downtown is basically just about 8 blocks either way and one "main" street called 4th st., where the hip cafes and bars are. Most of the buildings are new as of 1964 when the town was leveled on Good Friday by a 9.2 earthquake that lasted for 5 minutes! (and we thought the 1989 SF quake was bad).


On Friday after leaving my hotel, I drove south towards the Kenai Penninsula. Along Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, I stopped to see beluga whales playing along side the highway. My first stop was the town of Girdwood, home of Alyeska ski resort. It reminded me of Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe.

Next, was the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Reserve. It was my chance to see moose, brown bears, caribou and elk in a natural setting without getting eaten by one!

I eventually ended up in the town of Seward. This small port town was quite nice. Very quiet and relaxing. I got in late so, decided to stay the night.

The next day I was catching a cruise boat out of the town of Whittier to view 26 different glaciers in Prince William Sound. But, I didn't realize that to get to this town of 300 (80% of the residents live in one 14 story building), you have to go through a train tunnel, when the train isn't going through! It is one car width wide and not much taller than a train. You get one chance each hour to go through it and the same coming back out.

I have to say that the glaciers are much more dramatic and beautiful than I ever expected and I don't think that I can convey it in photos but, I'll try.
I did get to see actual calving on one of the glacier and even caught shot of it. On our way out into the sound, we had a pod of dall porpoises swimming around our boat. I was able to get a video of them too.
We also saw many sea otters relaxing on the ice floating around, they look like little stuffed toys.

I came back to Anchorage for the night and now on Sunday morning, I'm headed up to the town of Talkeetna (the town used to model the TV show Northern Exposure).



...I'll be back!