This beautiful state has always been on my bucket list for years and years! I was actually debating whether to go by cruise or just by flying and I have decided that flying was the best option for me, my mom and my baby boy, who was about close to being 2 years old at the time. So why did I want to visit Alaska? There are so many reasons and one of them was mainly is to see the beautiful landscapes and to enjoy the cold Alaskan weather! I love cold weather, and I love experiencing chillier nights and seeing dazzling foliage Northern Lights displays. I was also looking forward to seeing wildlife like the caribou, moose, black bears and grizzly bears! But the only thing I got lucky to see was a moose crossing the street on a Denali road. Not too bad for my first Alaskan visit. We decided to stay in Fairbanks, since there were more chances of seeing the Northern lights in this area since it’s much closer to the Arctic Circle.
A little information about Alaska that I have researched before going is that Alaska is in no way, shape, or form attached to the United States, but that didn’t stop it from becoming the forty-ninth state back on January 3, 1959. Instead, this sparsely populated state is surrounded by Canada, the Bering Strait, parts of the Arctic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. Alaska has multiple climates and the weather is dependent on where a person is in the state. Southern Alaska has mild winters with lots of precipitation, while Central Alaska has the highest and lowest temperatures in the state. Of course, the more North that a person is in the state, the colder the temperatures and while they do not get a lot of precipitation in Northern Alaska, what does fall is snow, and it stays on the ground all year long!
There are not too many roads in Alaska and quite a few people find themselves on planes, trains, ferries, snowmobiles, or dog sleds when they want to travel from city to city or town to town. These may seem like unusual ways to travel, especially when only going ten or twenty miles, but it is the way of life in Alaska and the locals are used to it and actually love living their life this way. The lack of transportation also encourages the wildlife to stay where they are and not migrate to other areas of the world.
The animals that are spotted the most in Alaska include the bald eagle, black bear, brown bear, caribou, Dall sheep, Canadian lynx, moose, mountain goat, muskox, orca, polar bear, sea otter, and the willow ptarmigan. Many of the animals are endangered everywhere else in the world, but in Alaska, they can be found just about anywhere and everywhere. That means that as people are hiking through the woods, they may find themselves face to face with the largest land mammal, the brown bear, or a moose. All these animals may look intriguing from afar, but up close and personal, they are scary, intimidating, and HUGE!
Interesting Facts About the State of Alaska:
· Alaska is twice the size of the state of Texas and is actually larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined.
· Alaska is also larger than the smallest twenty-two states of the U.S. Rhode Island could fit into the state of Alaska 452 times without a problem!
· The second largest earthquake in the entire world occurred in Alaska on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, and registered at a 9.2. There are usually 5,000 earthquakes every year in the state.
· There are twenty indigenous languages that are used in Alaska.
· Seventeen of the twenty highest peaks in the United States are in Alaska. Mount Denali is the highest at 20,320 feet above sea level.
· Three million lakes call Alaska home along with 3,000 rivers. The Yukon River is 2,000 miles long and Lake Iliamna covers 1,000 square miles.
· Glaciers cover 29,000 square miles of Alaska and there is an estimated glacier count of 100,000.
The motto of the state of Alaska is “North to the Future”, which is abundantly clear when the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis are spotted in the nighttime skies. On average, people can spot these spectacular lights 240 days out of the year, especially in Fairbanks.
Alaska is a magnificent state that is full of nature, wildlife, beauty, and unique things that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. It is also a place of hope, destiny, fulfillment, and dreams coming true for anyone who ventures up that way.
