A Day in Alaska

We arrived in Alaska on Saturday, the night before Easter. As we drove to the downtown hotel in Anchorage, I was surprised to see similar sights to Michigan where my husband grew up. I was also surprised to see bare ground where one would still expect to see snow. The temperature was milder than our city here. We attended Easter church services at a Christian Church in the city of Anchorage. We both felt like we were in our own church with the same songs, same order of service, etc. Only downfall was that no one spoke to us. Guess that is much like our churches here in the states. We drove just 40 miles south of Anchorage to the Alyeska Resort to eat lunch. We were impressed with the resort at the base of the 4,000 foot mountain. They had definitely received more snow than in Anchorage. As we ate lunch in the resort, we were in a position to view some of the ski lifts and some of the skiers coming down the mountain. It was so surreal to come just 40 miles and be in a different climate. By looking at the crowd at the resort, we were definitely out of our league. After lunch, we headed further south to investigate for the day. We hadn't gone 5 miles when it began snowing--a lot! In just a few minutes, the road was covered with snow. We decided that it wasn't worth traveling along the coast with signs posted to beware of possible avalanches and heavy snow coming down. So we turned around and headed back to Anchorage. The areas where avalanches have fallen post a 10 mph FASTER speed limit to get you through the area. And the city of Seward where we were headed had received 4 feet of snow a few days earlier. We didn't travel 3,500 miles to be caught in a snow storm. We returned to our hotel to catch up on some sleep since we were suffering from a four-hour time change. We also spent more time plotting our agenda for the coming days. Although everything seems within reach on a map, it's not!