Anchorage

I recently spend a few days in Anchorage with my parents on the way through to the lower-48 for the summer.  Instead of a lot of my boring words, I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

This is in Earthquake Park.  Before March 1964, the ground went straight across and was filled with houses.  The ground in that whole area turned into liquid when the earth started shaking.  Now, it drops off, slopes down into mud flats, and is heavily wooded. 

Eisenhower Statehood Memorial and Captain Cook Memorial

 In true tourist fashion, we stopped to take pictures of the moose that Mom spotted along the highway.

Denali.  Fortunately, there were no clouds obscuring the view that day.  Apparently, the mountain is so tall that it creates its own weather systems, hence the reason it is enveloped in clouds most of the time.  Trivia: When measured from sea level to the summit, Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on earth.  When measured from the base of the mountain to the summit, Denali is actually taller.

4 guys, aided by copious amounts of alcohol and very little common sense, decided to summit Denali.  Amazingly enough, they made it to the top and back.  Alive.

Everything is Alaska is bigger.  And the days last so much longer.  This is 10:00 at night. 

Flattop Mountain.  Yeah, I climbed it.

The last 100 feet or so up was climbing rocks.  It was awesome.  And so much easier to go up than to go down.

Byron Glacier.  We had to hike through sink-y snow to get there.  It was an adventure trying to find places to step where we wouldn't sink in up past our knees.

Jawbones of a blue whale on display at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Gray whale at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

That's just a little bit of what we saw while we were there.  My dad took over 500 pictures over the course of 10 days in Elim, Nome, and Anchorage.