Our First Day in Anchorage

By Sarah Ann

Thursday, August 12th

Today was our first day in Alaska! We finally made it! Hurrah!

In my first post, I outlined how we were going to visit three National Parks. However, the two-day plane delay has forced us to rearrange and skip Glacier Bay NP. We’re very sad about that. Instead of flying to Juneau, we flew to Anchorage and are spending two days here.

We went on an hour-long boat ride to see a glacier. It was on the boat ride that it really hit me - holy cow we are in Alaska! The boat ride was beautiful. The glacier was really pretty. The lake water was grayish-turquoise due to silt in the glacier and floating in the water were bright blue icebergs. The glacier had a little cave in it. The captain was saying, “Ever since that cave has formed we get the same question over and over again.” She was interrupted by a loud boom. A piece of the cave had just fallen! “The question we get is if we ever go in the cave. The answer is no.” 

Anchorage is a rainforest and summer is its rainy season. That means that we were encompassed by a beautiful lush green. It also means it rained on us on the boat, and will probably rain most of the time we are here.

Next, we did a two-mile hike to a glacier. Christian LOVED the glacier. He loves all things snow, so he enjoyed climbing around on it. I think he would have stayed there all day. However, it was cold and raining, and my mom does not love being wet and cold. We continued on to a scenic drive and ordered Little Caesar's pizza.

We decided to go to the wildlife conservatory that was right next to the boat tour. Rachel, Taylor, and my mom went when they went to Alaska before. They have rescue animals of native Alaskan species. We saw porcupines, black bears, grizzlies, wolves, caribou, moose, and more.

We ended the day by hiking 3.5 miles on Flat Top Mountain. We weren’t far from the top when the trail started going up a mountain of rocks. Then, the trail pretty much ended. The rocks continued. Christian decided to turn around and my mom went with him while Rachel, my dad, and I finished the hike. We had to crawl on all fours, practically rock climbing to the top. I’ve been learning vocab words for the SAT, and the word “intrepid” popped into my mind for that hike. We made it to the American flag that marked the summit.

As we took pictures, a cloud rolled in. I should explain that we are in the clouds. So when the cloud rolled in, it rolled over us, and we were surrounded by fog. Then, it started to rain.

Flattop mountain

We were ready to head off the summit. The top of the mountain was flat but the path up was super steep, so in the fog, we couldn't see the way we'd climbed. Rachel was leading us down and found what she thought was the “trail” (I put trail in quotations because it wasn’t really a trail). I was ready to follow her down. Just as Rachel was taking a step off the mountain, my dad said, “wait! That is not the trail.” We were about to walk off the edge of the cliff! 

We found the actual path down. It was even more adventurous going down since the rocks were slippery and we couldn’t really see. I wish I could show you a picture, but unfortunately, we were too busy clinging to the rocks to take pictures.