Alaska

O'Hare airport is number one in the country for delayed flights, so clearly our flight was delayed last night.

The flight was incredible. I lucked out and had a window seat. My dad had mentioned that the flight might not be that interesting because it was going to be dark the whole way. Not so. The Northern sky actually never really got dark, so I could see amazing mountain ranges as we crossed into Alaska.

I hate flying, but it went ok. The worst part was landing. The runway is about a hundred feet in from the pacific ocean and there was something unnerving about that. When I left walked in to O'Hare last night, it was 94 degrees in Chicago. When I walked out of the airport in Anchorage, it was 46 degrees. Quite the change. It was 11:10pm and it was still light out. The cool air felt so good, though.

Instead of staying in Anchorage like we had planned, we drove all the way to Kenai. We got to Kenai around 3:30am, which is 6:30am in Chicago. It was already starting to get light out again. I called my mother, since it was 7:30am in Detroit and talked to her for a while. Then I tried to go to sleep, which was kind of hard because it is so quiet here. I am used to falling asleep to sirens.

I guess I am going to do this peculiar thing called "hiking" today. I guess what it is is where you just walk for an extended period of time into the middle of nowhere and then walk back. I'm not really sure what it accomplishes, but apparently it is quite possible in here. In Chicago, "hiking" is known as someone who wears saggy pants pulling them up.

I've been instructed what to do in case we encounter each type of endangering animal. I guess you fight brown bears, which could turn ugly real quick for the bear with my toned physique and past history as a champion prized fighter.

MOM DON'T READ FURTHER.

I opened the local paper today to read about the frequency of bear attacks in the area. It was the cover sotry, which may or may not mean a lot because this does not seem to be the most active place in the world.

Alright. Hiking it is.