Alaska At Last

Alaska At Last

Noel Laflin

Oct. 6, 2018

As I mentioned to a friend who recently asked if I'd ever been to Alaska before, I said, 'No, but it's been on my bucket list since it was a territory' - and long before I even knew what a bucket list was.

As a kid, I would stare at a giant map of our forty-eight states. The colossal map covered nearly the entire length of one of the walls in my bedroom. And in the bottom left corner were smaller inserts of two U.S. territories, Hawaii and Alaska.

As it turned out, every state west of the Mississippi was eventually visited by the time I left home for good. Hawaii was explored, not long after. But touching upon Alaskan soil just had to wait several decades.

And so it was, with long-awaited anticipation, that David and I finally set sail last Sunday for the Inside Passage. Every call at port was a last for the season, as ours was the final ship to see the likes of Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, and Ketchikan till next May. Turned out it was the Pearl's last trip to Alaska as well.

And though we expected rain and gray skies, we were rewarded with sun as well as sunny human dispositions everywhere we went.

And in that week I learned much. I witnessed much. I marveled much.

But finally touching upon Alaskan soil was the finest much of all.