And away we go!

Anchorage was a beautiful and nice small city with all the amenities we have become so dependent on.   We enjoyed our visit here but it was time to repack our life into six large suitcases and finish the next leg of our journey.  We arrived at the Anchorage airport nice and early only to find that our flight was delayed almost four hours due to maintenance.  We spent our time reading, watching people, walking around and waiting anxiously for our boarding call.  The plane we flew in comfortably sat thirty passengers, had the smallest lavatory I have ever seen, and offered beverage service.   Our flight would take us from Anchorage to Unalakleet then on to Aniak, about a two and a half hour trip.  We flew over amazing landscape. We saw the Alaska Mountains, Russian Mountains,  Kuskokwim Mountains, and the Yukon River.                                                                                                                                                               The further west, the more rugged the terrain, and I noticed that I did not see any villages, towns,
roads, buildings, or any sign of human life.



 Unlike flying over the midwest where you see blocks, patchwork fields, roads, lights, and constant evidence of  "us"; all I could see was vast wilderness which left me thinking if any of this beneath me has ever felt the weight of our footprints.  It truly is untamed. I felt so small. 

In Unalakleet we landed at an airport about the size of a Super America and got off the plane for twenty minutes or so.  I wandered into the parking lot and found myself standing on the edge of a frozen Norton Sound, a bay of the Bering Sea.

We reboarded the plane and shortly thereafter we landed in our temporary new village, Aniak. It was cold and snowy and it was now home.






Beth