The Great Outdoors

Here I am in my hotel room, on my last night in Alaska. More to come on that later- I want to do a little show and tell about the amazing experience I had on Saturday morning.

I really wanted to do something related to Alaska while I was here. Something I could not do anywhere else. Time was very limited because of my work load up here. In addition, the freezing temperatures limited me. My first choice would have been to go whale watching. Wrong season. Second would have been dog sledding. Didn't have the right clothes for it. So I went over to the visitor's center, and they gave me a pamphlet for Sound Aviation, a private plane rental company that does air tours.

Darrel and myself and a few friends decided to go on Friday afternoon. It is dark by about 3:30, so we talked to the pilot who owns the plane, and decided to go at 2:00. His wife (pregnant with kid number 7 in 7 years) picked us up with two cute little twins in the backseat, and took us to the local airport. It was just so cold, you have no idea. We loaded in the plane with Bill, took off, turned around in the air, and landed. Turns out that the weather was beautiful where we were flying to, but he could not get out of the airport area because of fog. We decided we would try for Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was beautiful! Bill picked us up at the hotel at 10:00, and we were in the air by 10:30. I have never experienced anything like what I saw in my life. The photos below just don't do it justice because they kind of wash out the colors and don't show the vastness. Did you know that glaciers are blue? Like the color of the ocean in the Caribbean blue. We would fly over them, then bring the plane down and fly next to the cliffs. The famous glacier that we saw was the Knik. We also flew over Lake George, and Mat-Su Valley, saw sheep, mountain goats, reindeer and moose, and Mt. McKinley. There is no life out that far except an animal every now and then. They have to dig for their food, and the sheep and goats can go months without eating. No bears- they were all in hibernation.
But the glaciers and the snow covered mountains- wow. I felt so small. It is something I will never, ever forget.