Cheechakos in The Great Land

After another night with our friends at the double-wide in Skagway, Ashley and I left Alaska only to come back in at a point further north. The logistics are somewhat complicated (especially for those of you inept at geography, you who didn't even know it was possible to drive from the Lower 48 to Alaska), but you have to travel back through Canada to drive from the Southeast Peninsula to the rest of the state. This drive was an adventure and a good sign of things to come. More specifically, we had a close encounter with our first grizzly. He (or she) was slinking across the Alaska Highway and grazing just alongside it. We pulled to the opposite side of the road and stuck our upper halves out of the sun roof to watch it from about twenty yards away. Ashley was snapping a few photos, and I was looking on with unabashed excitement. The grizzly then took notice of us and stood on its hind legs to check us out. Having heard what we've heard about grizzlies, Ashley yelled, "Sarah, go, go, go!" and I slammed my foot on the gas; our adrenaline was pumping, but we couldn't help but die laughing.

Now Alaska being the size that it is - more than twice the size of Texas (sorry Texans but you're not as big and bad as you think) - we had to crash for the night between one small "town" and the next (namely, Glennallen and Palmer), and in the morning we headed toward Seward, on the eastern coast of the Kenai Peninsula. We slid through the Chugach mountain range, and as we approached the Anchorage area, we began to see, for the first time since Vancouver, signs of development such as a Best Buy and fast-food joints. These came and went, however, because soon we were on the peninsula - Alaska's Playground - and back into nature and passing through the occasional Northern Exposure-esque "town" like Moose Pass.

Oh, The Great Land!

Vocabulary...
cheechako: a "tenderfoot" who has never spent the winter in Alaska or the Yukon