Alaska The Last Frontier

Moving howling wolf. Digital image. Gif Animations. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. <www.gif animations.com>.

Alaska The Last Frontier

This summer I went really far north, I went to Alaska! I had to ride a plane for twelve hours, and my family and I flew from Houston to Salt Lake City where we had to run for our connection that would take us to Alaska. While we were on the plane, it started getting dark, what confused me was the daylight never faded. It was beautiful endless blue with soft orange and yellow light mixing together to make the best sunset I have ever seen! When were about to land you could actually see the shape of the state of Alaska! Of course when we landed in Alaska it was past midnight, but I was happy, my first time in Alaska! Alaska is really beautiful with a lot of scenery, and animals. When we were in Alaska we went to Denali state park where we stayed in the Princess hotel, which is this awesome hotel with lots of metal statues we also got ice cream, Alaska has a lot of selections and most of them I didn't even know existed like Cotton Candy for example, not in the mood to try something new, I got Triple Dark Chocolate and my great aunt got Cotton Candy ice cream. We also went on a tour, but to get there we had to go on a train. Where we did stuff like drink the best hot chocolate in the world, eat reindeer sausage (I told my friend that I ate a reindeer and she accused me of eating Bambi), see Mt. McKinley(Koyukon Athabaskan for the high one elevation is 20,320 ft.), and eat reindeer chili in a sourdough bread bowl (the chili and the bowl were delicious). We also saw stuff like a half eaten moose carcass( gross), a baby moose, a 600 ft drop into a river, the small town of Sherman(a town hall and a few buildings) and a beaver dam. When we were in Denali on the tour we saw so many things like a Wolf (aawwwrrrooooo), a Ground Squirrel, a Red Fox, The state bird of Alaska, a Lynx (we would've gotten a better look, but a stupid bus drove in front of us), Mountain Goats, Caribou (the leader was wearing a collar to track the herd's movement), another baby Moose, and Bears. In Alaska there is 21 hrs. of daylight and 3 hrs. of darkness, so it was weird to be going to bed during daylight plus even though it was summer the temperature ranged between 54 to 64! We also went to Homer, Seward, and in Homer we went Halibut fishing (Halibut are like a larger version of flounder), and when we went Halibut fishing we saw otters and seals and  the bait we used was Herring we didn't have to bait it ourselves all we had to do was yell BAIT! and a helper would come bait the line for you ( good thing too I hate fish and try to touch them as little as possible) Halibut are bottomers so the weight was useful because in Alaska while fishing for Halibut 140 ft. is considered shallow!The weight we used was literally a solid block of 3 lb lead , and the hook was half a foot long! I caught a 2 ft. long 40 lb. Halibut, then a 4 ft. long 200 lb. Halibut, then a fish called a scorpion fish (a fish almost completely covered in spikes) what I didn't get was I was catching a lot of fish my brother was catching none, so he moved to my rod and when I moved to his I started catching even more then before! When everyone had caught either the limit(2) or none at all in the time of one hour the boat guide showed me how to clean it (or rather cut off it's head and gut it) then he let me do it! I am normally really squeamish of fish, but it was something new and I wanted to try it, but I got A LOT of guts on my hand. We also went to a this center for animals, and saw all sorts of stuff like a Puffin, Salmon, very venomous Jellyfish, a sea lion named Woodie that weighed 17,000 lbs., and a seal. While we were in Alaska because my great aunt and uncle own a plane we flew out to a cabin they have,( if it had been winter we could have walked, during winter the lake the plane is parked at freezes completely solid)  a really old two roomed cabin with no electricity, and the only bathroom is an out house with a heated toilet seat (it was Disgusting!), but the cabin had a zip line, and was a lot of fun, but the only way to go swimming is to wear a wet suit plus the only way to get where you can swim is by hooking a motor to a square dock (cool) and motoring out to where you can swim, I was bored, so I said sarcastically to my brother, "Push me in please!" he actually pushed me in! I was so mad! No one got any sleep that night because there were so many mosquitoes we were swatting all night even though I was wearing jeans and an under Armour shirt the mosquitoes flew up my pant leg and down my shirt and bit me everywhere! I got 48 mosquito bites that night. At 4:00 am I couldn't take it any more, so I moved to a creaky old couch that creaked every time I shifted a little bit in the living room/kitchen as far away as I could get from the mosquito's in the two roomed cabin, but since I was up I got to see the best sunrise I have ever seen. The next morning due to the creaking of the couch my dad sprayed oil on the couch's hinges to shut it up. When we went back to my great aunt and uncle's house we had to fly again, and on the way back my great aunt's dog a Westie named Katie was in the back seat of the plane we were going to have sandwiches for lunch, but we couldn't because it turns out Katie was sitting on the bread...so the bread was literally dead! The last thing my family and I did was we went on a big cruise ship where we saw Orcas, seals, Sea Lions, a whole colony of sea lions, more Puffins, Otters, Dolphins, caves, and waterfalls. When it was time to leave, I didn't want to leave, but we had to. Maybe you should visit Alaska too, see the beautiful scenery of Alaska The Last Frontier!