Last August, my friend Jake hosted a few of our other classmates and me for a week of adventure and fun in his hometown of Anchorage, AK. I brought my camera along and got a little trigger happy. Some of my favorites are here (I tried to keep it short but there were just too many…)
You can see the full set (400+ pics) here
Our first day out, we took a glacier cruise out of Whittier. This was one of the 26 glaciers we saw. Our boat hung around this one for about 45 minutes to see if it would calve (break off chunks of ice). Sadly, we heard cracks but saw nothing.
On our ride back in, a school of dol-porpoises (I think that’s what they were called?) came and swam next to, in front of, and in between the hulls of our boat.
Blessed with unbelievably clear skies visible from Anchorage, we made a 3-hour drive to Talkeetna to go flightseeing through Denali national park. We boarded a little 10-seater prop plane and flew right up to and around Denali (the mountain, also known as Mt McKinley) and the surrounding range and glaciers. Remember the scene in The Simpsons Movie when the family arrives in Alaska and Homer thinks he’s looking at a poster when in fact he’s just looking out his window? This was exactly like that. One of the most unforgettable moments of my life.
Only in Alaska can you be looking down at ice masses hundreds of years old one minute, then swimming in a lake the next. After flightseeing, we swung by Jake’s uncle’s cabin, a cozy little place on a lake in the middle of nowhere. It was bizarrely warm, and after a few snacks and beverages, we decided to head out on the lake. Jake’s uncle towed Sarah, Dave and me on a tube around the lake and, well, had a lot of fun with us.
On another day in the trip, we donned outdoor gear, backpacks, helmets and cramp-ons for our boots and hiked the Mac glacier.
Unfortunately I was not able to get any pictures of one of our activities that week: pack-rafting. The nature of the activity – a short hike, blowing up a small inflatable raft, and individually rafting down a river fed by a melting glacier – did not lend itself to carrying around an expensive camera. However, it was (mostly) a fun thing to do. I say mostly because my waterproof pants turned out to be anything but, and therefore 3 hours in I was very cold, shriveled, and miserable.
Towards the end of our trip, we took an 11-mile hike in the mountains to a small lake. It was a fun, relaxing (relative to everything else we’d done) way to spend the afternoon and wind down the trip.
Again, check out more pics here. We had an amazing time in Alaska and I encourage everyone to go there. I can’t wait to go back.
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