I’d heard about the sunlight and weather, but it really is strange once you get there. This time of year it stays light for nearly 20 hours a day. The sun fully sets around midnight and rises again about 4-5am. Between the constant sunlight and the time difference, my clock wasn’t ever quite right. Sunny weather that rarely gets above 60 leads to some beautiful landscaping all over the place, too. Flowers grow like crazy and everything is bright, bright green.
The first of our adventures was going king salmon fishing at 6am. Fishing is pretty serious business, so we had to stake out our site by 5:30a to ensure we would get a good spot by the water. I never knew what “combat fishing” was until 6am hit and 30 poles all went in at once around me. I hadn’t been fishing since grade school with my dad, so my serious lack of pole skills and pink sweatshirt of girly-ness made it pretty obvious which of these things was not like the other. Everyone around me was extremely nice and very quick with the fishing tips. They were either trying to help me catch something or trying to keep me from hooking them in the leg with my wild casting. Not sure which. The salmon that other people were catching were 35-40 lbs, so I wasn’t too upset that nothing giant came my way. I attached a picture of my only catch of the day: A genuine Alaskan tree branch!
After some breakfast, we decided to go glacier hiking in the pouring rain. Apparently the glaciers are prettier when it’s raining, so this weather was a very good thing. (The entire car ride to the mountain with the windshield wipers on full-speed, I was not convinced.) Anchorage is surrounded by mountains on three sides, so this hour drive outside the city was amazing. We learned all sorts of things about trees, wildlife and climate from our local expert, Becky. A quick stop at the visitor’s center provided a touch of dry warmth and plenty of bear warnings. Apparently, there was a giant bear spotted on the trail two days before. Great. I tried to read the signs about how ‘you can run from black bears but you should never run from brown ones’, but honestly, I decided I was running either way.The National Park Service and Forest Service basically manage 75% of the land in Alaska, so the trails and grounds were extremely clean, safe (bears not withstanding) and well-maintained. After a mile hike past a stream and through the trees, we finally made it to the glacier. I had to admit that the ice was an amazing blue color against the rainy clouds. You can’t actually climb on the glacier without special equipment, but we did run around in the surrounding snow and take a million pictures of stuff. I attached one of my feet because I could not believe that I was standing in snow on July 10th while it was 100 degrees at home. So strange. The final picture is Laurie and me in front of Byron Glacier looking quite outdoorsy.
The remainder of the week was mostly meetings and training, but we did have some great food and spent as much time outside as possible. I highly, highly suggest that anyone who likes being outdoors should go visit some day. It’s extremely tourist-friendly and you don’t have to do anything more than look at the scenery to be entertained.
Thanks to everyone who made the trip to the hot and steamy family picnic. My parents and I counted 45 people who made it this year. Very impressive! It was so good to see everyone and thank you Sue for posting the family pictures on her Kodak page. Here is a link to the few that I took.
http://tinyurl.com/2llomx
Take care,
Niki
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