Alaska Day 1

This is Adam and Lisa's Place. This is where I was staying... and Adam and Lisa are awesome. Thanks for letting me stay here... and for feeding me and entertaining me and providing me a vehicle for the week. :)

Lisa and I went to the museum. Lisa had been there quite a few times, I'd wager, so she stayed down and read Harry Potter 7 while I walked around. This here is an exhibit about the Alaska Oil Pipeline. There's a small section of the Pipeline in front of me.

Newspaper headline when Alaska became a state.

This is a picture of a picture. Old Timey!

Words to live by.

This would be the moose we are not to touch.

This badge is awesome.

One thing I did notice while walking through the museum was that the information boards could really have used some proof reading. See the error here? [Hint: last sentence of the first paragraph]

ill-advised

This here is a giant painting of Mount McKinley (Denali). I was rather taken with it, and sat and looked at it for a while. Also, there was a padded bench, and I was tired.

Here's another painting of the Alaskan peaks.

There was this art exhibit, and it had this board game. I'm pretty sure it was about racism.

After the museum, Lisa and I headed to these wetlands. I might not have mentioned it yet, but the drive from Wasilla (where Adam and Lisa live) to Anchorage (where everything is) is just beautiful: Mountains, wildlife, wide expanses of open land, giant sky... it was amazing.

So we're here at these wetlands, and there's a walkway that brings you around some of the streams running through, so you can get a good look.

The wetlands stretched on for quite a ways... and the sky went on forever.

So we're making our way down the walkway, and I'm still awed by mountains.

here you can see the walkway.

To the right you can see the highway.. so it is literally just feet away from the road.

We're just a short ways away from a shooting range, and so while we were here, gun shots rang out constantly. Some people didn't make it all the way to the range, and just shot the sign instead. This is apparently not uncommon up here.

More wetlands.

Here I am... in Alaska!

We stopped by one of the streams that ran under the walkway, and got to see the salmon swimming by. This dude was huge.

Our next stop was this chocolate shop. That there is a chocolate waterfall of sorts... next to giant tiles of chocolate. I purchased dark chocolate covered espresso beans, which are my favorite.

We're driving back to the house now, and I've discovered the Black & White setting on my camera. For the next 25 minutes I was convinced I was Ansel Adams.

I also found the "C" [Chrome?] setting, which seemed to really bring out the colors in shots. I like the C setting a lot. Also, Alaska's nature is beautiful.