Alaska: A Visit One Can Never Forget

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Going back to these pics now makes A.S reminisce this unforgettable trip to Alaska

AkiraSabine(A.S) is still strucked with awe by what she saw a year back(June 2010). Although she was only there for a week and only been to 2 cities in Alaska. she did not do Denali and many other places which she believes she missed out a lot but "Oh well! She'd rather travel deep than wide"

It's a mistake to put up a slideshow instead of one by one pictures along with captions but anyways, you can always visit Akira's Flickr page to read up on the descriptions. A.S would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Nevertheless, it was the summer of 2010 when she touched down at Anchorage, Alaska. It was somewhen 10pm when she checked in into the backpackers' hostel. She was lent a bike to explore the sleepy town at night. The miraculous thing was it was still as bright as day as she wandered on the bike. However, all the shops were closed and the streets were quiet.

The next day, A.S took a train which offered her one out of 2 most scenic train views( the other one was the train journey in Switzerland) she's ever seen. One side facing the cliff, the other the ocean and far beyond, the snowy peaks. As it went along, she was intimidated by deep gorge with gushing water right beside the rail and then going up some narrow valley in between snowy slopes arriving beside reflective lakes and she was told  she would be able to spot mountain goats/whales/dolphins on her lucky days.

Seward was a port town about 2 hours' drive from Anchorage. Over here, A.S felt she arrived at paradise! It's a place with lots of cruises bringing visitors out to the sea to enjoy the marine wildlife and glaciers. Over here at Seward too, A.S went hiking at Exit Glacier. Not feeling satisfied, the next day, she signed up to go ice climbing at Exit Glacier which means this time, she went on the ice and down into the narrow crevasse. Before the real climbing, she had to lug with her a backpack filled with water and energy bars, a pair of ice axe, boots equipped with crampons, helmet and hiking sticks . TOUGH, TOUGH but it was all worthwhile when at last she landed on the ice enjoying the breathtaking sights from a higher level. The climb in and out from the crevasse was killing her. It required a lot of arms and feet strength to carry the body weight up the 90 degrees ascent!

At the hostel, AkiraSabine managed to talk and listen to adventures of fellow travellers. "Wow, the whale just jumped right in front of our kayak and did a  flip!" Another would say, " We've been mostly camping and hitchhiking in most of our trips here in the USA." "There were a mother brown bear and her cub walking 10 metres in front of us when we were hiking at Exit Glacier just now!"

Last but not least, Akira thought she should also share the following pictures which she missed in her earlier selection. Too lazy to include it to the slideshow, so, here goes...

Exploring Anchorage on a bike at 10.30pm on a summer night. The sun did not set until 11.45pm and showed itself at 5.30am.

 Seward Town which basically has 2 main parallel streets running across it.

The first sight of these Recreation Vans (RVs) lining up the waterfront amazed A.S. She thought it was SO COOL and she wanted to try it. It's such great pleasure to BBQ in the evening and waking up to such breathtaking sights!

As she was looking out into the water, she caught something moving. SEA OTTER!!! This marine life was so conscious about it's appearance that it just GROOMED NON-STOP while floating on it's back in the water.