Well, we're finally here in Anchorage! Sorry it's so late folks, it was a long day. We got to ohare around 7 am and flew thru checking our bags and security, both of which took us 5 minutes! (yes, I'm serious, and yes, I'm talking O'hare folks) Our flight was quite possibly the best flight I've ever been on. We sprung for 1st class, which for a flight like that, it was totally worth it. For lunch, we got warm mixed nuts, followed by a salad, followed by steak and potatoes, which honestly isn't as good as it sounds. The nuts and salad was good, but the steak was chewy and the potatoes were instant, but hey what do you want for airline food? The other passengers got their choice of a "snack pack" or tuna set for $15 or something like that. Our meal was included. We were also given these digital boxes in which we could watch movies, TV episodes, listen to music and play games. Again, included for us, $12 for everyone else. So besides being a long flight, it was very comfortable and very smooth.

Flying into Anchorage you really get a good feel for what it looks like on the map. Anchorage is in a little inlet inside the curve of the south-central part of the state. You definately see this when you fly in. It's pretty here, but not amazing. Anchorage feels like an old mining town-of what we've seen so far anyways. Occasionally in our hotel room I hear the sound of a floating plane flying in or the sown of the Alaskan Railroad train. Think the West part of downtown Seattle area meets Aurora, IL meets Deadwood, South Dakota meets a suburb outside of Bloulder, Colorado. That's best I can describe Anchorage because parts of Anchorage remind me of each of these towns.

The weather wasn't so great today-low 60's and cloudy and rainy. When we got into town, I had the worst headache-combination of change in altitude, I'm really tired, and the weather. So when we got into our hotel room, we laid for about an hour or so before we went out to a late/early dinner, depending on what time zone you're in (we're 3 hours behind Central time) at the Glacier Bay Brewery downtown. It was pretty good. Big place, I had salmon (of course). It's funny how good, fresh salmon looks and tastes so different from what we're used to in the midwest. It's a deeper pinkish peachish color you just don't see in Illinois and it's less chewy. Great stuff.

We had an interesting cab ride there. Our cab driver used to work in Villa Park and lived in Elmhurst. Not for long, just 4 years. He kind of started to talk us into going to Denali National Park, which we had thought about before our trip, but were afraid it was too far. We're still thinking about that one. It's not as far as we thought it was, but it's still far. However, we may never be back here again, so we kind of feel like if we're ever going to see it, now's the time. If we do it, it won't be until Sunday.

Tomorrow we're not quite sure what we're doing yet. Our first priority is to get used to this time change and this lack of darkness. In fact, as I type this it is 10:45 local time and there's no sign of the sun even thinking of going down. It's kind of a strange feeling. The sun is where it's at at 7 PM in Illinois.

Well we've been sleeping off and on for the past 4 hours and I'm forcing myself to get into this time zone, so I guess it's okay for me to go to bed now. Goodnight (or good morning as the case may be) and I promise, this blog will get a lot more interesting in the days to come-unfortunately today was a travel day and not that exciting.

KL