When I had accumulated enough frequent flyer miles for a free trip anywhere in the continental U.S., Canada, or Alaska ... and in Anchorage I had a good friend from MIT whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years ... what part of that choice required thought again?

I recommend the Quicktime VR versions of the panoramas.

I got in around 7 PM, and we took advantage of the high latitude and accompanying extended sunlight to go hiking right away. I am immensely jealous that Anchorage has this sort of thing in its backyard. (Quicktime VR)
We made it to the top of Flattop Mountain around the time the sun was setting.
I think it was the first time I'd seen actually purple mountains.
Flattop Mountain is far and away the most climbed peak in the state of Alaska. This is why.
The Frommer's guidebook lists "From the Chugach Mountains Over Anchorage, at Sunset" as one of the five best views to be had in the state. Click on the thumbnail to see it with the city lights.
The next morning we got up and drove down the Seward Highway, designated an All-American Road. I kept wanting to stop at every pullout and take pictures. Mia kept saying, correctly, "They all look like this."
I mean, the exact type of scenery confronting us kept changing, but the caliber never dropped.
Near Seward we stopped and took a short hike, crossing the Coastal Classic line of the Alaska Railroad (note the single track; one train goes along it in each direction once daily). A few seconds after we crossed, the train passed (and passed, and passed).
Our destination was Seward, at the base of Mount Marathon. Remember that mountain, and notice the whitish trails on the upper slopes of the bare shale face. We'll be coming back to that in a minute.
We spent most of Friday on a glacier/wildlife viewing cruise of Kenai Fjords National Park. We did see a pretty large variety of wildlife, everything from bald eagles to bears, but it was mostly too far away to photograph well, so I'll mostly be showing you scenery and glaciers here. Binoculars were indispensible.
This rock at Three Hole Bay may be the most photographed in the world.
Here's Holgate Glacier, the most impressive on our tour. That little cave in the middle is in fact a massive cavernous opening on the order of a hundred feet high, out of which thunders a continuous cataract representing the outflow generated by the pressure of the glacier's length, attended by wheeling flocks of seabirds all but too small to see at this resolution. A couple of the AVIs in the full album give a better sense of its scale. From the glacier, powerful despite our distance, came an endless icy wind. We saw some ice crumble while we watched, though no major calving.
And we were home in time for Shabbat candles and Cheryl Ann's challah. Those major cruise ships are huge.
We started the next morning at the Alaska SeaLife Center.
Then we went kayaking in Thumb's Cove, under the watchful eye of the Prospect, Spoon, and Porcupine Glaciers.
Still plenty of sunlight, so we climbed Mount Marathon. The mountain was (re)named for the race that takes place along this trail every July 4, and I can't for the life of me understand it. The first part of the trail goes up this near-vertical section too difficult and dangerous for me to conceive of running and too narrow to conceive of passing.
Runners continue up through a densely wooded section, too steep and muddy in places to maintain footing, hardly less narrow, and reportedly bear-infested.
Higher they get to an area of crumbly crumbly shale, where the barrenness means that at least I can imagine passing taking place, but still not running -- the slope is still 45 degrees to much steeper, too steep in many places to climb without using one's hands, but every handhold immediately crumbles into an unhelpful collection of gravel and painful shale shards.

(This part of the trail is visible on the photo of the town and mountain above; the ascending part is the one on the left, descending on the right.)
At the top, they do not stop to appreciate the view.
(Quicktime VR)
Instead, these heavily disturbed people run back down the mountain, at top speed. Ambulances wait at the bottom. Crowds of onlookers cheer when someone falls.
The lower parts of the descent, of course, are just as impossible to navigate with any speed or pass on as the lower parts of the ascent.

It took us somewhat over three hours for the hike, starting and ending at the trailhead. The record, starting and ending downtown, is right around 43 minutes. Joe, Mia's brother-in-law, has run in the race half a dozen times.

That pretty much took care of us for Saturday.
Sunday morning we went to Exit Glacier.
This is a glacier you can walk right up to, if you want.
It's not recommended, though, as a tourist was killed a few years ago doing exactly what these people are doing, when the glacier calved.
Another short trail leads up along the side of the glacier a little ways. The crevasses are the result of the ice flowing over boulders underneath.
The Harding Icefield trail, several miles each way, goes up through forest, tundra, and delicious wild berries to where the glacier leaves the icefield far above. (Quicktime VR)
Again, there's no good sense of scale here, so I'll try to describe for you how big these crevasses were: BIG.
Near the end of the trail was an emergency shelter, bolted into the ground with steel cables all around the perimeter.
At the top, we met a trio with cross-country skis, about to start a seven-day trip all the way across the icefield itself to Truuli Peak and back.
On the way down, we met some marmots. Also, apparently, very nearly some bears.

As we started the drive back to Anchorage, it started raining, and more or less didn't stop until I left the state.
I spent most of the morning and afternoon the next day in the Alaska Museum of History and Art. The Modern Native Art gallery had some truly remarkable works.

Frederick Kingeekuk, Untitled, group of walruses (2001). Whale scapula, walrus ivory, pigment.
Kathleen Carlo, No maagh hut aanenh (Storytellers from the Coast) (2002-3). Yellow cedar, brass, copper, feathers, gold leaf.
Spence Guerin, Moon over Matanuska (1980). Acrylic on polyester.
It took considerable effort for me to tear myself away from the Sydney Laurence and Alaska Landscape galleries.

Sydney M. Laurence, Mt. McKinley (ca. 1925). Oil on canvas.
At a dam on Ship Creek, you could watch salmon fighting their way upstream, which was pretty exciting for me as a city boy and salmon lover.
Well, "fighting" is a relative term. These were salmon pretty close to death.
Others did not fail to take advantage of this fact.
I thought this was an extremely cute logo.
The next morning I went to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where I planned to spend a few hours and ended up staying for pretty much the entire day and would have liked to stay longer. It was this amazing assembly of Native buildings, artefacts, customs, demonstrations, culture, history, and traditions, all curated, explained and performed by representatives of the different Native cultures.
That evening, Joe took the four of us to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. It was a lot like any other state fair -- food, rides, booths -- except for the usual spectacular setting ...
... the characteristic kinds of foods available for purchase ...
... and the size of the vegetables (again, there's nothing for scale here, but that cauliflower on the left is probably close to a couple of feet across).
Wednesday was pretty unexceptional, until the evening, when I rented a bike and went down along the 11-mile Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.
It wound at first along various scenic coastline areas, past duck-festooned lagoons and urban parks like Earthquake Park, shown at left, where the way the land had come apart in chunks and slid into the ocean during the 1964 Good Friday earthquake was still clearly visible.

My guidebook said that on the unpaved trails of the densely wooded Kincaid Park, at the end of the coastal trail, "moose sightings are a daily occurrence". That was my hoped-for goal, both the destination and the event. The flyer the bike shop gave me, on the other hand, said of the later part of the coastal trail: "Here it is likely you will see moose." That seemed a much stronger statement, which I wasn't counting on, but my hopes were high.

What I saw first, though, was a billboard along the trail warning of the apparently immense danger of moose encounters. "Moose use their razor-sharp hooves to tear apart wolves and bears," it explained helpfully. "What chance do you think you have?" It went on to show a Curious Moose (ears up, fur flat, "you're probably still okay") and an Angry Moose (ears lowered, hackles raised, "you're in trouble now!"). I went on, still hopeful but warier.

Let me just reemphasize now that all of the following was on a paved trail, within the city of Anchorage, wherein half the population of the state resides.
Further on, just across a bridge, I glanced down a cleared area to my left and there it was! Moose! I came to a squeaky-braked halt, crept back cautiously and started taking pictures. It seemed to care very little.
Then as I retreated, it advanced, closer than I was entirely comfortable with after that billboard. Note the reassuring position of the ears. When I'd gotten far enough back, it crossed the trail and trotted off. Wow, I thought. I'd seen a moose, up close and personal. A shame it wasn't the canonical antlered kind, but still, I'd had my moose. All was right with the world.

Then I passed a pair of boys on bikes, the second of whom said as we passed, "Lots of moose back there."
Sure enough, a couple of bends further on, not far off to the side of the trail: not one but two giant bull moose! Huge antler racks, shoulder humps, dangling neck flaps, the whole shtick. I took photos, and watched ears.
(Sorry about the quality of this whole set of photos -- it was starting to get dark, and the flash was naturally no help. Raining again too, of course.)
A little bit further on, I thought I saw a rustling in the brush to the side of the trail up ahead; I slowed, and sure enough, the trees disgorged a massive cow moose, followed by two calves. And they ambled just over to the other side of the narrow trail, and more or less stood there, eating the underbrush and the leaves overhead. And I wanted to continue on the trail past them, Kincaid Park still absurdly my nominal destination. So, after a moment, I started approaching very slowly and cautiously, watching the mother's ears with a rapt attention I wish I could bring to lectures. The clouds of smoke she occasionally snorted from her nostrils were a nice touch. One standard piece of advice about encountering a bear is that you should identify yourself as a human by speaking calmly to it; hoping that the same principle would transfer over to moose, and wanting to make sure they were aware of my presence and know exactly where I was at all times for what I hoped was their own peace of mind, I launched into a moose monologue, keeping a quiet stream of words going as I approached. Every time they'd turn to look, I'd freeze; when they returned to their meal, I continued. And eventually I was past them, passing within a couple of yards.

(This may have been the part of the story where I was actually in the greatest mortal danger (though keep reading). My Alaskan friends were independently shocked by the idea that I would do something so stupid as trying to pass a mother with its calves on the trail, especially slowly and continually broadcasting my presence. Apparently moose are very unpredictable, tramplings are common, and mothers with calves in particular can just decide to trample you for no reason. Why do the guidebooks only warn you about bears?)
I did reach the end of the trail alive; at that point, to make it back to the rental place to return the bike in time, I'd have to ride back more than twice as fast as I'd averaged on my way out. The way back, of course, was back along the trail.
And darned if those mother and calves weren't still there, munching on the trailside foliage. This time, of course, I really had to get past them. Which I did.
Going as fast as I could with the darkness and increasing rain, I kept an eye out for the place where I had seen the two bull moose off to the side earlier. Where had it been? All these turns looked alike. I was sure it had to be one of these areas off to the right-hand side somewhere along here, and yes that appeared to be one of the two bulls out there at a greater distance than before, and in preparation for a more careful look and extended search for the other one I glanced back ahead of me to make sure I was staying on course and HOLY CRAP THERE WAS THE OTHER MOOSE on the trail right in front of me a few yards away with me heading directly for him at high speed. He was paying much closer attention to what I was doing than I had been. I skidded to a squealing halt off to the right a little and froze into adrenaline-infused statuary. He consulted his random action table and passed over Trample Violently in favor of Trot Away Into Brush. I went on my own way, moose monologue at much higher volume and sporting a quaver like a theremin played by an epileptic.

Before I was out of the woods, literally and figuratively, I had to make it past another huge cow and yet another bull, the latter of whom had a real fondness for the paved trail and wouldn't move far enough off it to let me pass for a good five to ten minutes. And, of course, there was no possibility of turning back at this stage.

But in the end, I am escaped alive to tell thee. Returned the bike one minute early, too.

Even if the other glimpses I thought I had of moose along the way were the products of an overstimulated imagination, that had been close encounters with a minimum of eight separate moose, up to five of which I met twice. No longer did I regret not being able to fit Denali into this trip.
The next day, my last, I went back down along the Seward Highway, stopping at a number of places along the way, including Potter Marsh. (Quicktime VR)
Here again there were many salmon not particularly swimming upstream.
Near Girdwood is the Crow Creek Mine. I had really expected it to be a former mine turned tourist trap, where you could pay a fee to "pan for gold" and take a few salted flakes home in a little glass vial as a souvenir. But it turned out to be still an active mine, where the people paying that fee were bringing in their own pans and shovels and metal detectors. Even more interesting is the way the original 1898 miners' residence has been continuously occupied since its construction, for the last six decades by three generations of a family who run the place as a National Historic Site and have lived and grown up without electricity, telephone, or running water. The first of them moved there from New York City.
I watched the bore tide from several points along the highway. Keep in mind that this is not a series of waves; this is just the tide coming in, forty miles inland from the ocean. At its best it's a feet-high wall of water advancing as a foaming line across the entire width of Turnagain Arm.

After the bore tide there passed dozens of belugas. Apparently 46 of them had been beached for hours beforehand, which I had entirely missed somehow.
Alaska Wild Berry Products has a 20-foot-high chocolate waterfall in their main store. There's a little Augustus Gloomp in all of us.
As I prepared to leave, it stopped raining briefly.
Between Alaska and Boston, I visited Chicago. There I caught up and stayed with Ian, another good friend from MIT whom I coincidentally first met within minutes of meeting Mia. Had I not pretty much entirely filled up the 136 MB of camera memory I'd brought along in the previous seven days, I would have many more photographs of our visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Also in the northern suburbs of Chicago that weekend was the unspeakably elegant wedding of a good friend of mine from high school.
I didn't get to talk to him to any extent worth speaking of, of course, but with the wonderful people and the many long-lost high school friends and the insane setting it was a rousing good time nonetheless.

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