Alaska Part 1

What to do when one has a few days off, some extra frequent flier miles, and it’s December in Seattle? Why, fly to Alaska.

Sounds crazy, but that’s really about the gist of it. Being December in Seattle, all the frequent flier seats to Mexico, Hawaii, etc were used up, and it needed to be somewhere that was a quick flight. We’d never been to Alaska, and I somehow managed to convince Matt that it was a good idea (for a few hours. By the time he changed his mind, the tickets were booked).  While nontraditional, I think I can safely say we both loved it.

We flew in right over the Kenai peninsula with an awesome view of the mountains, the city, and then the Chugach range, which got us off to a great start. Sunrise to sunset was about 6 hours each day, but there was about an hour on either side of that which was fairly light, so we had ~8 hours to play, and the rest to catch up on much needed sleep and relaxation.
 

We ate lots of good food, explored tons of parks, got our exercise, and enjoyed the great outdoors. There was much that reminded us of our March trip to Iceland, from the mountains that rise up out of the ocean to the surreal light of a sun always low to the horizon. Anchorage was cute, the mountains in every direction were fantastic, and while I’ll certainly be back for a longer visit in the summer someday, there’s something special about seeing a place all decked out in the snow, and minus all of the tourists.

Restaurant recommendations include Snow City Café (breakfast), Spenard Roadhouse, Kinleys, Glacier Brewhouse, and Kaladi Brothers Coffee.

I'll let pictures do most of the rest of the talking:

flight in:

 Room with a View

We took an afternoon stroll in Far North Bicentennial Park which is huge and at the foot of the Chugach Range. The trail network was enormous, the sun was out, and we found a cool snow covered airstrip.

 Explored Kincaid Park, another huge park on the edge of the city with an impressive network of cross country trails and some sledding.

Stumbled upon the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, which has some cool Alaskan animals that were mostly rescued as youngsters that had been orphaned for some reason or another. They had moose, reindeer, lynx, bears, musk ox, wolfs, and more.  Not as  cool as stumbling upon them in the wild, but certainly wilder than a zoo.

um, yeah

Made our way out to Portage Glacier, which was pretty obstructed by some bad weather, but neat all the same.

 Thoroughly enjoyed the drive out to Girdwood, with views of Turnagain Arm the entire way

Made our way to Glen Alps in the Chugach Range for a great snowshoe. It has awesome views of Anchorage, the Kenai, and across to the Alaska Range (where McKinley would be on a clear day). We started up Flattop Mountain but eventually got to a section with avalanche danger so turned back and meandered some of the other trails.