The long return

A few thoughts about Alaska and our trip:

• Perhaps I'm the only person fascinated by maps, but I never quite get over how far we go on trips in such a relatively short time. It's around 3,200 miles from Anchorage to State College and we made that in 14 hours or so total. Sure, it was a fairly miserable 14 hours (sitting by fat old grumpy men sucks), but it's a fair trade to see such a beautiful natural area.
• Holy crap, I could never live in Alaska. The weather was pretty great while we were there. Highs in the 60s or 70s, regular rain and lots of day light. But as our boat captain said, they have four seasons there. June, July, August and winter. Considering I hate the cold of central PA, I want nothing to do with regular temps 10 to 20 below zero. As HIGHS. Plus, they get 4 hours or so of daylight, and the sun never goes very high in the sky. How people don't commit suicide, I'll never understand.
• I only saw true darkness once the entire trip. My mother-in-law accidentaly set her alarm to go off at 2:45 am one morning. My first thought, after 'what the hell is going on?' was 'Holy crap, darkness outside. Weird.' With enough curtains and blinds, I thought it was great.
  
• I'd never seen a fjord before. Wanted to in New Zealand, but it was a long detour. So we missed them. And according to our boat captain/guide, there are only a few places in the world where they occur. After seeing them, I gotta say that anybody who enjoys traveling and especially enjoys natural beauty has to search them out. Just striking how these mountains just rise strait up out of the water. And our boat got within 20 feet of some of them.
• I think our ship's captain may have been a little bold, but it was really worth it. I figured we'd stop at least a quarter mile back from the face of the glacier once I saw the ice field in front of it. As he said (paraphrasing) "Smarter, safer captains would probably stop here. But I always find that boring." So off we went. And thank goodness we did. Hearing those boulder-sized chunks of ice break off, then crash into the water was something I'll never forget. I'd guess we were no more than 100 yards from the face, but it was impossible to wrap my head around the scale. We could have been 50 yards, it could have been a several hundred. Nobody volunteered to stand next to it to provide any scale.
• Not to get all preachy, but we had really strange mixed feelings watching the glacial calving. It was awe inspiring to watch and we all kept hoping to see more while we were there. (We did see several small breaks, a few mini-avalanches and one big chunk crack.) But at the same time, we knew why it was happening. Temperatures are higher and many of the glaciers in Alaska are receding at a scary pace. Adding to it, we knew that flying all the way up there, then watching as the back of the boat spit out massive amounts of diesel exhaust the entire 9 hour boat ride wasn't exactly helping matters. In fact, it seemed really bad. So our trip was absolutely amazing and we saw things we never expected. But I couldn't really escape the nagging guilt that I was playing a role in what I saw just by being there. I don't regret going, but I will try to keep in mind that my actions impact the world more than I realize. Hopefully that will be a good lesson going forward.