usa: alaska 1 - anchorage and denali
heres the thing. i really, truly tried. i have cut, culled, deleted and i still have many, many pictures of alaska that i want to show y'all. its not my fault - its alaskas fault. as sandi says, its like during creation, alaska got 50% of all the beauty in the world, and the remaining 50% was divided out among all the other regions on the earth. every single view is mind-boggling.
in fact, after touching down, monica (she and matt her husband hosted us for the first 3 days THANK YOU!!!) kindly picked us up and off-handedly said if were not too tired, would we mind a short drive? of course! 10 minutes later we are out of down-town anchorage and driving through a postcard...but way more pretty, in 3d and 360 degrees. 1hr later, 230 shots on my camera i had decided i was going to move to alaska. wow. there are no words big enough to describe it.
as a result i have to inform you that i will allow myself to go a bit crazy and do 3 blogs on alaska. sorry, but your just gonna have to suck it up. even at that i have cut out so many ridiculously beautiful shots that they are feeling jealous of the ones that made the cut.
heres the view out of matt and monicas back yard.
alright, just kidding. its not their backyard. but its only 15 min drive from their backyard, so it may as well be. so just a few hours into our trip, i thought that i had now seen enough awesomeness to last me a couple of lifetimes, and if i had had to go back home right there and then i would be happy. by the way, monica had this tiny little camera in comparison to my huge dslr and she consistently took brilliant shots that me look a bit ridiculous for lugging this huge thing around only to get lesser pics....i guess theres a lesson in there somewhere, but i'm deliberately ignoring it. so i have featured a few of her shots here, starting with this one
and another beauty from monica:
and then the very next day, matt offers to take us up in this tiny plane (60s era piper cherokee, if my memory serves me correctly, but you can correct me if i am wrong, matt) which had just enough room for the 4 of us AND our thermos for onboard refreshments.
another picture to make kennie jealous....
if our minds weren't boggled before, this definitely boggled them. wow. what. a. mind. blowing. experience. we flew over denali park, topped by the magnificent mt. mckinley you can see in the background to the left. mckinley is the highest mountain in north america at 6,197m. even though everest is higher, it sits on a base which is already high, whereas mckinley rises sheer upwards from almost sea level. its also very cold. although we didnt get out to check, in 1932 an expedition recovered a thermometer that had been left there by a previous expedition years earlier. it recorded a low of approximately -73 degrees celcius. they couldnt tell exactly because the thermometer didnt go any lower.
we cannot mention alaska without mentioning glaciers. seeing as there an estimated 100,000 glaciers in alaska. we flew above this glacier up into the mountain range. what beauty.
matt was an amazing pilot and guide and spared no effort to get us awesome panoramas. mere photos cannot describe this experience. sometimes the peaks and glaciers felt close enough to touch.
at one point we went down and buzzed around a tiny mountain hut and suddenly the sheer scale of the mountain peaks was impressed on us.
on our way back we landed at this empty airport, parked our plane and walked about 10 minutes into this town called talkeetna (population 772). here is a picture of the city center:
it may look small, but dont be fooled, its the home of delicious caribou burger! it is apparently also the home to the Moose Dropping festival (???).
so this was our first 48hrs in alaska. what a beautiful place. what a majestic mountain. what superlative glaciers. as we flew home, watching this sunset out the window, we thought...surely, surely, nothing could match these first few days. surely its downhill from here on. or....was it?
