Alaska Day 0 - OAK to ANC

Due to late flight booking we could only get reasonable tickets from Oakland airport to Anchorage. We don't prefer OAK airport merely due to traffic if driving, and lack of public transportation (outside of east bay).

The security scan and layover in Seattle were smooth. From Seattle it is a long 5hr flight to ANC, we decided to learn few things about Alaska from the in-flight magazines. Here are a few we could remember:

• Over 100K glaciers and 3M lakes.
• 49th and the largest state in US!
  
• Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867, for $7.2 million ($113 million in today's dollars) - $0.02/acre
• Juneau is the capital, not Anchorage. The only US capital accessible only by boat or plane.
• The trans-Alaska pipeline is 4ft wide x 800 miles long!Of the 20 highest mountains in the United States, 17 are in Alaska. 
• Mt. McKinley is the highest peak in North America. Mt. McKinley is the highest "vertical rise" in the World.
• Economy - oil & gas, seafood, logging, transportation,tourism, metal mining/minting.

Flying over Gulf of Alaska, approaching ANC, we could see over the peaks above the clouds - called a "Nunatak" but with clouds instead of snow/ice. More like this, but lots of them, we lost our other pictures taken from flight :(

Arriving at ANC, looking at our outfits of down jackets, we were instantly "Cheechako" (native for tourists). The airport is very neat and big. This walkway caught our attention, and someone told us about "Northern Lights" effect.

We were pleasantly surprised by the midnight sun, take a look of downtown Anchorage at midnight.

We checked-in and tried to sleep, to begin an adventurous vacation. Welcome to "Alakshak" - meaning great lands or peninsula!