8/26/2007 (Journaled on 7/28/2013)

Day 0 brought us to Anchorage from Ann Arbor on Alaska Airlines. Great flight with awesome service! We stayed the night with my brother in law and then my nine year old son Hayden and I then set off one of our best vacations ever. I have been Alaska obsessed ever since!

Our big accomplishment of the day (and then some) was a hike up Flattop Mountain in Anchorage. Flattop is a “moderate to strenuous” (in the Alaska hike rating system it would seem, we don’t have a rating for such a hike in Michigan). 1.7 miles and 1300 feet up. That equates to steep and sometimes almost crawling for those of us without much experience with that, or with a healthy (?) concern of heights. Count me in for both of those. Others, like the guy running up and down the mountain with his kid on his shoulders seemed to not notice the terrain. That goes Hayden too it turns out. He would have been up and down three times by the time I got up there had I let him run free.

That all said, it was an awesome hike and a highlight of my life. Amazingly fun, rewarding, and – did I mention the view. The “Mountain” as they call it here was out. Thus we saw Denali (aka Mt. McKinley) clear as day all the way from Anchorage which is a couple hundred miles away. We figured out after our vacation that many who come to Alaska never get a clear view of the Mountain, and as it turns out, this view on this day would repeat itself every single day we were in Alaska! Incredible!

I dream of doing this hike again. Did it once but all that did was cement its spot on my bucket list!

Here are a bunch of pics from the hike (what may look like a cloud off in the distance in most of these photos is actually the Mountain):