I consider myself very lucky to get to go to Alaska twice a year. I feel like it is always the longest week of my life, but also one that is filled with top notch fun.
Alaska is how I imagine the Wild West was once like. Filled with land and tough terrain and large, wild animals.
For years, I've had an Alaska bucket list. This list includes:
1. Eat as much seafood as humanly possible (this one will never get checked off, because one can never eat enough seafood)
2. See a moose in the wild. Close enough to see it, but far enough away to not get killed by it.
3. See the Northern Lights.
4. Blow bubbles in negative degree weather so they instantly freeze (I did this last spring and it was amazing)
5. Visit Wasilla. The home of Sarah Palin.
7. Go dog sledding.
8. Take a glacier cruise.
Before this trip, I still had # 2, 3, and 5 to accomplish.
I am proud to say, that as of the end of this week, all of these can be checked off.
I flew in a bit early Monday morning and took a drive around the Kenai peninsula. Turns out it was Columbus Day #IndigenousPeoplesDay, so the head office was closed and I got a bit of free time to roam.
I went down to Seward for a quick visit. Since tourist season was ending, pretty much everything was closed, but it was still a nice drive.
As I made my way back to Anchorage, I ended up continuing on to Wasilla. It was all that I had hoped it to be.
My colleagues and I spent about two days in Anchorage before heading to Fairbanks. I really like Fairbanks. It's not the prettiest, but we always find interesting things to do there.
For instance, this time, we went to North Pole, AK. What the what?!?It is a town just outside of Fairbanks that celebrates Christmas all year round.
They have a Santa House there, with reindeer and candy cane light posts and a real, fake Pole. There is also the world's largest Santa.
(I consider it the world's creepiest Santa, but potato, potatoe)
Children can call Santa whenever they want and a lot of the letters they write to Santa are sent here.
Adorable.
It was a fun little outing before heading to one of my favorite places, Silver Gulch, the Nation's northern most brewery. Filled with good drinks, good eats and lots of good company.
After filling our bellies, a friend of ours told us that the northern lights were out and that we needed to find complete darkness to see them.
We still can't figure out how he knew, but he did.
And we saw them! It was faint, but it was still cool. I ended up seeing them again later that night around 2 am and they were a bit more green and a bit brighter.
We stayed out for awhile, chased the lights around and then headed back to the hotel.
On the way back, Friend S1 was driving us all down a pitch black road...and what does she almost hit?
A group of moose.
They were massive, with large antlers. There was probably about 4 or 5 of them right by the road. Friend S2 and I, who have both been dying to see a real moose literally high-fived in the backseat.
We're a cool, easy to please group.
Too excited to sleep, Friend S and I stayed up and played board games in the hotel lobby. I taught friend S how to play chutes and ladders and she creamed me every time.
State count:15
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