The wife and I headed off to Alaska for a little honeymoon. Weather was good; lows in the 30s, highs in the 60s, days were about 13 hours long, most of the tourist crowds were gone and the hotels were cheaper since it was off season. The big plus is that everything was still open. Come mid to late September many things shut down outside Anchorage. The scenery in Alaska is powerfully big and beautiful, you see it in the snowboard videos and such but it does not compare with being there. People are tougher, not in a gangster way but in way like they say stuff like walk down that trail, you will see a grizzly bears, like seeing Grizzly Bears is a normal thing to do. Other than being hardy, he people were really nice everywhere we went. I recommend a trip if you get a chance. We just drove around, nothing more than 300 miles from Anchorage

Chances are, unless you are John Centi driving the snowrev.com RV or Temple Cummins riding a motorcycle to heli board that you will travel to Alaska by plane. Thanks to ASR I had lots of good, free reading material for the 5.5 hour flight

Mt Hood, Oregon and that little square patch is Timberline, home of year round shredding

Mt Baker and North Western Seattle

Sure as heck, we flew right over Mervin Manufacturing in Sequim, WA, home of Lib Tech, GNU and more!

Anchorage from the plane, you may notice that even though Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska there is a lot of open space surrounding it and mountains to the North and the Turnagin arm (part of the Pacific Ocean) to the South. Anchorage itself is pretty wild with moose running in the streets and grizzly bears fishing for Salmon in city parks

Right off the plane and there are giant salmon swimming in a stream

Heading up the Turnagin arm about 45 miles to Girdwood

Bald Eagle on the side of the road

Girdwood feels like a mountain town, kind of feels like Jackson Hole, except it is on the ocean but there are moose in town, like Jackson. Since you are so far North in Alaska, the tree line is way lower than in say, California, so even though Aleyska is only like 3,000 feet tall, it is still an Alpine environment and looks like 10,000 feet at Mammoth. Aleyska ski area looks super fun and steep, kind of would like to go there in the winter

While hiking in the woods we came across a hand tram to cross a river, it is kind of like a ski lift except you power it yourself. I am pretty sure if they had this thing in California someone would get hurt and sue

Crossing Glacier Creek

Glacier Creek below the hand tram oh and yea, there were people mining for gold too and I dont mean like ha, ha tourists mining for gold, more like the real deal, I will shoot you if steal my gold kind of stuff

Moose are like the deer of Alaska. We wanted to see a moose up there so we asked people "where do you see a moose" and people looked at us like idiots, like asking where to see a subway in NYC or something

Here kitty, kitty, no wait, that is a grizzly bear

about 20 miles from Girdwood is the rapidly receding Portage Glacier

The face of Portage Glacier

Salmon spawning, they were huge and everywhere and fishing season started September 15. Kind of made other types of fishing look like a joke

Going through a 2.5 mile one lane car/train tunnel to Whittier, Alaska, weird

Think this was called Harvard Glacier on the Prince William Sound. It is like 5 miles wide and comes from an ice field like as big as Rhode Island or something

Three glaciers in an icy bay, they met up as few as four years ago, they are receding that fast

Thunderbird Falls