Landed in Anchorage

I made it to Anchorage, Alaska! I left Jackson at 11:35 yesterday morning....and finally touched down in the Great Land of Alaska at 10:30 (Jackson time), 7:30 (Anchorage time). After we finally got our rental car, got a bite to eat, and got to our hotel it was 2:00 a.m. (Jackson time), 11:00 p.m. (Anchorage time)...and it was still DAYLIGHT!! I don't know what the time was when it finally got dark, because I pulled my curtains tight and went straight to sleep...but I was told it would be around 12:30 before it was actually dark!

The co-workers I'm here with and I decided to meet at 10:00 this morning so we could sleep-in and catch up on some rest. Of course...I was up at 6:00...which was 9 in the morning at home....which for me, is sleeping in! So I've been catching up on some blogging and watching some local news. I've seen Sarah Palin on the news several times already! It is so cool to be here!

Here are some pictures of the view as we were flying in last night. The view was breathtaking! And all that white....its SNOW not clouds! The pictures don't EVEN do it justice!! There were miles and miles of snow-covered mountains as far as you could see. No civilization...just snow and mountains. It was amazing. I felt like I was sitting in a National Geographic Documentary.





I sat by a couple neat people on the different flights getting here. On the flight leaving Memphis, I sat next to a U.S. Soldier that had lived in Memphis all his life. He was very funny! We laughed the whole time. That flight was VERY rocky...and we were both making jokes when the plane would start shaking....I guess making light of it somehow made us feel a little better. When we landed there were wind gusts up to 30 mph....that should explain enough! As we were getting off, the pilot actually said, "I had to work for that one!" YIKES! Just as we were about to get off the plane, I asked the guy I had been sitting by if the reason he went home was for Mother's Day weekend. He told me actually he had been on emergency leave for his brother's funeral! I couldn't believe it!! When I asked what happen he said it was under investigation! WOW!! You just never know what people around you are going through.

On my last flight into Anchorage there were a whole group of high school choir kids that were returning from a trip to D.C. That made for an interesting 6 hour flight with 25 high schoolers scattered across the whole plane. One of the girls was sitting next to me and it was killing her that she wasn't able to sit beside this other kid...a boy! On the other side of her was a really nice lady from Atlanta that was headed to Alaska to visit her twin sister. She was telling me how she comes pretty often to visit and that her sister has taken her all over Alaska!

We had an awesome waiter at the restaurant we went to last night too! She has family all in the south but has lived in Alaska all her life. She loved talking to us and told us all kind of neat things about living in Alaska and what we need to do while we are here. I think we will have a good bit of time today to get some site-seeing in! I'll definitely keep posting pictures throughout the trip.