A long day..and still daylight! (Thurs)

Our day began at 4am with a taxi to the airport for an early flight to Chicago, then on to Anchorage.

This is the view, taken this afternoon,  from the hotel towards the mountains.  As I write this it is 9pm local time, still light and 20 hours since we got up this morning!  We had s few interesting views from the plane..

Firstly this was mist clinging to a river valley early this morning..

Wonderful cloud formations..

The neatest fields as we approached Canada..

Then of course the snowy mountains and glaciers of the northern part of Canada and into Alaska..

We have had time to explore Anchorage a little and one of our first stops was at Ship Creek just below our hotel where salmon are swimming upstream to their spawning grounds.  They are not very easy to see in this photo but each dark streak in the shallows is a good sized fish.

No bears to impede them here, just a few fishermen - although they seemed to be throwing them back..

Our impression was that many of the salmon going upstream at this relatively late stage seemed to be tired and a bit unhealthy looking.

We walked for a while along a path around the coast with a view of FlatTop Mountain.

The wetland areas and mudflats are a haven for birds during migration but all was quiet today.

Time to call it a day I think - a final photo as the sun sets over the water ..