My experience in Alaska as a visitor is probably going to be a lot different that most other vistors’ experiences. I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska for the first 14 years of my life, moving away in 1988. Due to scheduling conflicts, , and aside from short business trips, I simply haven't had a chance to go back and spend any quality time in Alaska. It’s by coincidence that I chose 2009 to make it back to Alaska for an extended stay. Alaska celebrates its 50th anniversary of statehood this year, as it was incorporated into the Union in 1959. It’s interesting that Alaska, the 49th state, and northernmost state, shares it’s 50th anniversary with the 50th state, Hawaii, the southernmost state.
I never did any of the touristy things when I lived in Anchorage. On clear days, we could easily see Mt. McKinley, being the tallest thing in the horizon. My family worked, and we never bothered to travel to McKinley. I used to play on a playground near the railroad tracks, and we would wave at passing trains. We would often see passenger trains with different colored cars at the end. These cars ended up being sightseeing cars branded with the names of cruise companies, such as Norwegian Cruise Line, Holland America, Princess Cruises, Carnival, and others. We would often drive past one of the many civil aviation airports in Anchorage, as there’s an extremely high percentage of pilots in Alaska’s population. We never wondered what it would be like to fly in those little propeller planes.
As a kid, I loved playing in the Alaskan summer time, which had daylight from 4 AM up until 11 PM, and even then the bluish glow of dusk would illuminate the sky for another hour. During the summer in Anchorage, the daytime temperatures would be from 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit. In the winter, it would be anywhere from 10 degrees to possibly -15 if a storm came onshore. It was never really that cold due to Anchorage’s proximity to the ocean. I sometimes loved playing in the snow in winter, as long as the snow was a little wet, so snow would stick together to form snowballs. After I moved, people would ask me about the lack of light in the winter. True, the sun rises at 10 AM and sets around 3 PM, but it was never all that dark. The streetlights kept everything well lit, especially due to the reflection off the snow and of the white clouds. I hated the early spring, when it would thaw out as it reached 32 degrees in the daytime. However, it would freeze again at night, so there were always hidden layers of ice and slush in the spring.
Anchorage is Alaska’s largest town, with a population of around 300,000. It was about 250,000 back when I lived there. While it’s not exactly Manhattan, it’s not a desolate backwards hick town either. Everything is newer, built from oil revenues in the 1980’s and later. I would compare Anchorage to a nicer and slightly larger Reno, Nevada, without the casinos. I’ve been to both cities and they have the same type of feel to them.
Russia is not exactly in Alaska’s backyard, as some have heard. But I remember back in the 1980’s, watching the news reports every few weeks of fighter planes from Elmendorf Air Force Base, just outside of Anchorage, intercepting Soviet bombers that would intrude into US airspace just off Alaska’s coast. The Soviets would often send bombers as reconnaissance planes to test US air defense reactions. We lived in fear that if an attack were to come from the former Soviet Union, it would probably come through Alaska. The fear was especially heightened in 1983 after a South Korean airliner, flying out of Anchorage, was shot down by Soviet fighter planes. It was especially bad since the flight carried a member of the US House of Representatives from Georgia, who was obviously killed during the shoot down. I remember the uncertainty that most Alaskans felt after this event. Some Alaskans thought we were several steps closer to war at that point.
Alaska is renowned for it’s world class fishing, especially salmon fishing. I remember the day that fishing season started, my dad has a cabin on the Kenai River, and we’d take the 3 hour drive there to fish for salmon. Then we’d drive an hour to Clam Gulch to dig for clams. We’d take the boat out to Homer for halibut fishing as well.
With those memories a distant past now, I decided to do the things that I never had a chance, or maybe never bothered to do. As I flew to Anchorage, I knew to sit on the right side of the plane so I could see the calm waters of the inside passage on Alaska’s Panhandle. We spent a day in Anchorage and did some shopping for supplies, then left for my parent’s cabin in Kenai. After a few days of fishing, we drove an hour from Kenai to Seward, where we took the Kenai Fjords Glacier Tour. After the Kenai Fjords Glacier Tour, we went back for some more fishing. Clam digging was not in the cards for us at the tides weren’t low enough and clam digging is only allowed if the tide drops below a certain height.
After staying in Kenai, we returned to Anchorage and overnighted at my cousin’s home. In the morning, My cousin’s son and I left on the Alaska Railroad to Talkeetna for some sightseeing. We stayed at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge for two days. During that time, we took a riverboat cruise up the Susitna River, attended a dogsled demonstration, went canoeing on Christiansen Lake, outside of Talkeetna. The crowning moment was taking a flightseeing airplane ride and landing on Mt. McKinley. While we weren’t at the 20,320 ft. summit, we were about 12,000 feet up, and at least we could say that we were on Mt. McKinley. In retrospect, with so many other pilots for hire, we probably could have found a better bargain elsewhere to fly to Mt. McKinley. The benefit of a flightseeing company that knows Mt. McKinley is that they can be your guide and identify the different mountains, peaks, and glaciers, that make up and surround Mt. McKinley.
Alaska really is the final frontier. It’s one of the most sparsely populated states in the US. Alaska is a great reminder that the natural world is a lot larger than all of us, from seeing wild animals in the beauty of their own environment, to seeing the beauty of nature from centuries old glaciers, to America’s tallest mountain. Alaska has a lot to offer everyone, and I think that everyone should take a trip to Alaska to see and experience the final frontier themselves.