June 1 - June 9, 2019

As I was planning out my big tour months earlier, I asked myself, what would be the craziest places I could go? The two places I thought of were, Alaska and Iceland.

But I never thought I’d go to Alaska. It always seemed too far away, too cold, and too expensive. What reason would I ever have for going there?

Then, I hear Maggie Rogers’ song, ‘Alaska.’ Her genuineness about an adventure she took at a turning point in her life struck a chord with me.

… Moving slowly through westward
Water over glacial plains
And I walked off you
And I walked off an old me
Oh me, oh my I thought it was a dream
So it seemed…

- Maggie Rogers ‘Alaska’

So, a few months later, at the start of June, I arrived.

Just like Maggie Rogers’ song, my trip through Alaska was adventurous as well.

I sang karaoke with strangers at the Hard Rock Cafe in Anchorage, walked around in the daylight of night (it doesn’t get dark there in the summers, such a surreal feeling). I biked a trail with a stranger, hiked a mountain with more strangers, met a dude riding a homemade moose antler skateboard through a parking garage at midnight. That’s right, a skateboard made entirely out of a moose antler, with some wheels attached to the bottom of it (only in Alaska). I met up with my old neighbor, his wife, and their friend. I flew a plane over Knit Glacier in Wasilla, Alaska, hiked a glacier, and met some very interesting people at the hostel I stayed at.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I saw a guy base jump off the top of a mountain only a few feet from me in Anchorage. Also while climbing a different mountain in Juneau by myself, I met and hiked with an older couple from Arizona, who just so happened to have lived in the tiny town of Camdenton, MO for four years when I went to high school there. What a small world!

Alaska was just what I was looking for to start off this big adventure.