Alaska 2024 - Top 10 Things We Learned About Alaska
In August of 2024, we completed a 14 day Alaska cruise on the Silversea Muse. It was quite an adventure! In this post, we share the top 10 things we learned about Alaska.
- Alaska is big!
Alaska is by far the largest state in the U.S. Alaska is 663,300 square miles (about 1,067,477 square kilometers) which is over twice the size of Texas. It's not obvious how big the state is when looking on most maps or globes, but it was really fun to get a glimpse in person.
- Alaska is wild.
Alaska has very few highways covering only a tiny portion of the state with relatively few cities. Many of the ports we visited were only accessible by sea or air and relied on steady deliveries by ship for basic needs including food. Once you step a few feet out of a city or village, you're in the absolute wild, and you're no longer the top of the food chain.
- Alaska is sparsely populated.
With a total state population of about 733,000 people, all the people in Alaska could fit in the city of Seattle, Washington. The only states with lower population are Vermont and Wyoming. Coupled with being the largest state, pockets of civilization and amenities we take for granted in most of the U.S. are few and far between.
- Alaska's fjords are like Norwegian fjords but are tree covered.
Fjords (large valleys with steep sides) were formed when immense glaciers moved across the land, stripping away any top soil that existed and grinding these valleys into the bedrock beneath. Since the creation involved stripping it of all the plant life supporting top soil, the Norwegian fjords are still pretty barren, with bare rock, lichens, mosses, and scruffy shrubs and sparse trees.
Alaskan fjords are exposed to much more rain which, over millennia, has allowed much more plant growth. The fjords have regenerated top soil with trees growing, falling, and turning into the soil and nutrients needed for even more plant growth.
We haven't been to the Norwegian fjords yet, but plan to, but the Alaskan fjords were a sight to behold!
- The wildlife is varied and awesome.
For people living in Alaska, it's everyday fare to see bald eagles, golden eagles, streams packed with salmon, sea lions, sea otters, black, brown, and in some places polar bears, and humpback and killer whales. For people who don't live in Alaska, all these creatures are spectacles to behold!
Silversea's excursions made sure were taken to places where we could observe many creatures both captive, such as in the raptor sanctuary, and in the wild.
- Some of the ports we visited get less snow then we do in Southern Ontario, Canada.
I grew up in Upstate New York in a small town near Lake Ontario, but now live in Southern Ontario, Canada, not too far from Toronto. The weather here is similar to where I grew up. Galina's from a small town in Bulgaria that was mostly cold and rainy in the winter but got a dusting of snow sometimes.
It surprised us to learn that the weather, especially in some of the towns along the Southern coastal cities close to the Pacific, was actually more akin to where Galina grew up than where I grew up. Sitka, for example, was said to get a lot of precipitation, but very little snow.
- Life in Alaska is quite different from life in the lower 48 States.
To outsiders like Galina and I, it looks like life can be pretty different in Alaska from life in the rest of the continental U.S.
If you live in Alaska, and you live in Anchorage, where you're in a city of about 291,000 people, you'll feel like you're in a relatively small city or town compared the kinds of populations you'll run into in many states. The next largest city after Anchorage is Fairbanks at about 32,000. Quite a rapid drop in population!
This also means, a lot of the things you'd find in cities of a million plus, or even in the surrounding suburbs may not be readily available to you in Alaska. You may have to be flown to Anchorage for specialty treatment like oncology, for example.
It also seems like families have to pull together to make it work there.
In Wrangell, we met Bella Ritchie who was our tour guide for our bus tour of the city. She is a High School student but also a tour guide. She was wearing jewelry her mom, Bonnie Ritchie and said it was all available for purchase.
We got off the bus back near the pier after the tour, and got to see a lot more jewelry at Bonnie's kiosk.
Reading this Alaska Magazine article about the Ritchies, from their Ritchie's Rocks web site, and from talking to Bella and Bonnie, the family works a lot, and works together. They have the jewelry business, and also a fishing business, with the whole family participating in both.
Also, the Wrangell High School wrestling team, which is small but renowned, has to fly to other cities for matches! Pretty cool, but expensive compared to hopping on a bus like I did in High School.
- Alaskans are grateful for Amazon Prime.
With its sparse population, you can imagine things that are readily available in larger metropolitan areas may not be in Alaska.
Like the rest of us, Alaskans can also find what they need online, but shipping can be slow and expensive.
They're thankful for the annual Prime membership fee and its free shipping for Prime items.
- Tourism provides much of the income for many cities.
Many of the ports we visited seem to really rely on the few months of tourism to supply much of the income the individuals and businesses need to make it through the year.
The population of many towns is quite small and the streets are lined with shops and restaurants looking to pull in enough income in the 3 or 4 months when passenger ships are in port to last them through the long polar dark spell until the next summer.
- Alaska Natives make up about 18% of the population.
While it's tough to say what Alaska Natives have been through with Russia, then the U.S. taking a huge interest in and control of the territory, they still make up a huge proportion of the population and their culture and art are on display at parks and museums and their wares are on sale in the shops in the towns we visited.
We hope they are treated well and their wisdom about how to interact with nature and survive in what can be a harsh environment is appreciated.
Wow! It was one of those trips of a lifetime and quite an adventure. We hope you enjoyed our articles and feel like you were entertained and enlightened a little.