Alaska

My brother Ryan and his wife Megan have been living in Alaska for the past year. Ryan has always loved aviation and knew from the time he was little that he was going to be a pilot and work in aviation. Ryan does have his pilots license but because it's so difficult, expensive, and takes a long time to get your hours if you are not in the military to become a commercial pilot he decided to go into air traffic control. He was accepted into the FAA's program up in Anchorage and will graduate in December.

I have heard so many amazing things about Alaska and what a beautiful place it is that we decided to visit while I had some time off this summer. One of the benefits working for the airline is the free flights so we decided since the flights looked good this past weekend to go up for a visit. Summer is usually a very difficult time to travel standby to Alaska because it the tourist season with all the cruise ships and the salmon fishing.

We left Thursday and we landed in Anchorage at about 12:30am. When we left Salt Lake City at 9:30 it was completely dark and as we flew it was if we were chasing the sun. We landed in Anchorage and it was still light outside! By the time we got our luggage and got to my brothers house around 1:30 it was dark but by 3am it was light again and even the dark wasn't pitch dark.

Alaska is just so BIG! There is so much wildlife and vegetation. Everything was so green, the ground was covered in green, it reminded me a lot of Hawaii without the warm climate and the palm trees. While there we hiked to Byron Glacier, visited the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center, Bird Creek, Kincaid Park, Blueberry Loop, and Flattop. While walking down to the beach at Kincaid Park there was a huge moose right off the trail grazing. Seeing these animals in the open is just amazing! We didn't take to many pics but here are a few.