National Treasure



What's so small that it has only one Representative, yet so big that every person in it has nearly one square mile all to him- (or her-) self?

Duh!

I grew up in one of the most beautiful, diverse states in the Union (California).  I've lived in nearly every region of this country (West, East, South, Midwest) and in Europe.  Yet I've never had my breath stolen so many times in one week - not by scenery, at any rate.  I can't say enough about this stunning place ... so I won't even try.  I'll let just a handful of pictures do the work for me.



Both  of these pictures were either in Girdwood, AK (south of Anchorage) or close to it.  We drove down there twice, so I'm not sure.  Doesn't matter.  Even a shot out the window of the car yields this:



Yeah, out the window of the car!  Of course, if you want to stop you might find this on the side of the road.

The side of the freaking road!  This gorgeous, Tolkienesque gem had carved itself into a cliff - a strange portal to a fantasy world offered this amazing calm while just behind me cars and trucks raced their way to more "civilized" destinations.

Oh, by the way, this is just the bottom.  The top of this fairyland is even more wonderful ...



The waterfall is a trickle this time of year, but they weren't all like that.  Thunderbird Falls, for instance ...



And the cliffs along the way ...



Okay, cliffs implied.  No I don't have pictures of them, and yes, I do have a bit of a weakness - not heights but drops, thanks to a little incident in which my sister and I went about four hundred feet, really fast, straight down, luckily hitting trees all along the way.  (And who had time to take pictures when her husband decided to walk along the edge of the freaking thing the whole way back just to punish her for making him hike the occasionally steep trail to get to see Thunderbird Falls?)

The icing on the cake, though, was the glacier ...

I've never seen anything like it ... ever.  We even got up close and personal.



This was about 350 feet away.  See the icebergs?  Glaciers do something called "calving," which is just a fancy way of saying "a piece cracks off and falls into the water," causing those icebergs.  Apparently, the average calves seen in the eight or ten tours they do a day here is one every other day.  We saw it calve twice in our single cruise - and I was so stunned both times I didn't even get a shot!

Yes, I panned for gold, too, and yes, I found gold in shops, but this ... this is more awesome and more important than anything I can buy.  This is the kind of treasure we can all find.  And it's only a plane ride away.

Okay, a very loooonnnnnnggggg plane ride away.

But it's worth it.