Today was a travel day. We headed to the airport in Philadelphia at around 10:00 for a 2:15 flight. We had a ton of luggage. As hard as we tried we just couldn’t get it down to a more manageable level since we needed cold weather gear, hiking boots, warm weather gear, waterproof pants and jackets, formal wear for the cruise etc… We managed to keep both of our large suitcases under 50 pounds, even with a tripod inside of Conrads. once we got our luggage checked we headed to the Admirals Club to wait for our first flight. Although the flight was supposed to be full we ended up with the 3rd seat in our row empty so we had a nice comfortable ride into Chicago. Despite leaving a little bit late due to people having issues finding space for carry-on luggage, we were able to make up time in transit and make it to O’Hare on time. We made our way to the Admirals club and grabbed a quick mean since they don’t serve food on the planes anymore. we made it to our next flight from Chicago to Anchorage and it was also on time. we had an interesting gentleman in our row who was heading to Anchorage to work his fly fishing business for the summer. He runs a business where they have fairly luxury accommodations, and they take people in float planes out to different areas to do fly fishing. He also works installing off the grid energy systems in the winter in the south eastern US. He was a super laid back and really nice guy.
When we landed at 10:00 PM the Chugach mountains were still visible in the distance since it was stiull light out.
Quick shot from the terminal in anchorage
We arrived in Anchorage and called the Hyatt place hotel to get a shuttle. A lovely young lady showed up to take us to the hotel. She had just started working there as her second job and had gotten married over the weekend. She was from American Samoa but has been living in Alaska since 2013. We arrived at the hotel and Talia was the the front desk, she got us checked in, got us all of the information that we needed, a snack from the marketplace since the restaurant was closed and got us signed up for a shuttle for the morning and our flight to Fairbanks. She was still there in the morning when went down for breakfast in the morning.
Fairbanks tomorrow.