Yes, in case anyone was getting worried, I am back from Alaska, but just haven't had the motivation to do much of anything, including posting. It was an amazing trip. If you have any love for the outdoors, for nature, for mountains or rivers or water, you would love Alaska. It's amazingly beautiful, but like nothing else I've ever seen. We got to see several glaciers, hike around one. We saw moose and bears (black, from a distance) and eagles. I met people from all over the world, up there on vacation or hoping to find lucrative summer work. I met people from Mexico, India, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Britain, and all over the lower 48. I met one guy hitchhiking up to Fairbanks for a folk festival he was going to play in. I met a couple retired women from California trying to find mindless work for the summer. I met a really nice girl from Pennsylvania preparing to go on some intense, two-week backpacking trip. I met a couple from Unalaska (an island in the Aleutian chain, about 600 miles west of Anchorage) who worked there as longshoremen. They were heading back home on a four-day ferry ride at the end of a month-long vacation to mainland Alaska. Everyone seemed to be on some sort of adventure, and Alaska seems to be a place where such adventures can still happen.