The enormous scale of Alaska
Feb 17, 2020 06:43:52 #
Occasionally, we have people on here ask what to expect on a trip to Alaska. In 2016 my wife and I took an UnCruise excursion on the inland passages and up to a glacier. A great cruise line and we thoroughly enjoyed it!
I was going through some photos and I found this one that illustrates just how big Alaska is. Each day was divided up into the passengers choice of activities, and we were on a zodiak boat excursion. The captain pointed and said that there was another group hiking up the hill on shore, and people said they could see them hiking up there. I couldn't, but took a couple of shots anyway. Later, checking one file, I finally located a single person in the top right of the frame. Other hikers identified her and she later did, too, by her hair and jacket color.
It takes seeing a person in the picture to understand the enormous scale of Alaska. That was an awesome cruise!
Alaska29May16_079 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr
Marshall
I was going through some photos and I found this one that illustrates just how big Alaska is. Each day was divided up into the passengers choice of activities, and we were on a zodiak boat excursion. The captain pointed and said that there was another group hiking up the hill on shore, and people said they could see them hiking up there. I couldn't, but took a couple of shots anyway. Later, checking one file, I finally located a single person in the top right of the frame. Other hikers identified her and she later did, too, by her hair and jacket color.
It takes seeing a person in the picture to understand the enormous scale of Alaska. That was an awesome cruise!
Alaska29May16_079 by Marshall Smith, on FlickrMarshall
Feb 17, 2020 07:02:29 #
Feb 17, 2020 07:16:42 #
I was always impressed with the wideness of the flood-plains of so many rivers; just seem to spread out the full width of mile-wide valleys, just because they could, yet the rivers themselves were mostly sandbars with small to medium streams meandering wherever they pleased, going generally in the same direction. Quiet and vast, an awesome country!
Feb 17, 2020 07:32:34 #
Exactly: the scale. My wife and I ahve been to the Alps and then a few years ago we traveled to Alaska. Now the Alps are beautiful, but the magnitude of the largess of Alaska was just difficult to grasp. The enormity of the place is just overwhelming. 
Feb 17, 2020 08:03:45 #
Feb 17, 2020 11:45:38 #
I spent 2 and a half years in the early 70's in Alaska during which I earned my pilots license. Flying was the preferred form of travel then. There were more planes than autos per capita back then as there was only two hwy's(Hwy 1 and Hwy 2). Entering Alaska and when reaching Tok Junction turning left took you to Anchorage.......right took you to Fairbanks............
Feb 17, 2020 12:31:48 #
photosbytw wrote:
I spent 2 and a half years in the early 70's in Alaska during which I earned my pilots license. Flying was the preferred form of travel then. There were more planes than autos per capita back then as there was only two hwy's(Hwy 1 and Hwy 2). Entering Alaska and when reaching Tok Junction turning left took you to Anchorage.......right took you to Fairbanks............
Yeah, Alaska pilots are something special, for sure.
During our cruise one woman had some kind of medical emergency, and a floatplane set down, picked her up and flew her back to Juneau. Business as usual for the pilot.
Marshall
Feb 18, 2020 08:28:15 #
Nice photo! I describe Alaska as simply that everywhere you turn your jaw drops from the staggering beauty.
Feb 18, 2020 09:12:05 #
I lived in Alaska for more than 20 years and teased a friend who lived in Texas that if you dropped Texas in Alaska, we'd find it eventually. (Alaska is twice the size of Texas with a population of, as I recall, about 650,000. About half of them live in or within 50 miles of Anchorage, which means it's hard to find folks in vast areas of the state.) At the time I arrived, I heard that one in seven Alaskan adults was a pilot. I was one of them, though I didn't do much flying there.
Feb 18, 2020 10:56:33 #
Feb 18, 2020 11:30:19 #
Flying into Anchorage for the first time I was looking out the window and was awe struck with the snow covered mountains and how far they extended.
Feb 18, 2020 12:15:33 #
bamfordr
Loc: Campbell CA
Same experience with scale on a Lindblad cruise. A 12 person Zodiak heading toward the base of a high waterfall on the shore of an Arm. They kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Feb 18, 2020 12:27:22 #
John Matthews
Loc: Wasilla, Alaska
Fotoartist wrote:
Big scale. Photogenic?
Nothing photogenic in Alaska
Feb 19, 2020 03:28:39 #
RodeoMan
Loc: St Joseph, Missouri
He, who does not find Alaska photogenic, brings a dull eye its perusal.
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