My Last Day in Alaska

Yesterday was the last day of our trip. We ate breakfast, turned in the rental car and just walked around downtown Anchorage. Besides going in gift shops, we got to go to the Alaska Experience Theatre. It has a 4-D movie on the famous earthquake in 1964 and another movie in a huge omnidome theatre on Alaska.

I learned a lot about the 1964 earthquake:
1) It took place March 27, 1964 at 5:36 PM and was the largest quake in the northern hemisphere.
2) It lasted about 5 minutes and was 9.2 on the magnitude scale
3) It went 20 miles deep!
4) The energy of the quake was equal to 447,335,482 tons of TNT or 31,822 Hiroshima size atomic bombs!
5) During that 5 minutes, land rose or fell as much as 50 feet!

BEFORE

Here are some before and after photos.

AFTER

Another thing I learned was about the pipeline. I learned about this at the Anchorage Museum too. The pipeline that goes 800 miles through Alaska also goes right over the most active fault line in Alaska - the Denali Fault Line. In order to keep it safe, it's designed to move back and forth up to 22 feet horizontally and 5 feet vertically without getting damaged. Here's a picture of it:

We had to be back at our hotel to get the shuttle at 2:30PM so that's all we got to do that day. Our plane left at 5:30PM. I used my last $6.00 to rent a DigiScreen to watch Night at the Museum... it was worth it because I was so tired and the plane ride was so long. I was sitting in the middle seat and was crowded on both sides so I couldn't even lay down to go to sleep.  We finally got to Seattle at 10:00PM. My Pops picked us up at SeaTac and we arrived at my Grani and Pops' house in Bothell about 11:00PM. I had to bring out my presents and tell my Pops all about the trip so I didn't get to sleep until around 12:00 midnight. My mom was REALLY nice and read my Percy Jackson book The Sea of Monsters. I went to sleep at 12:30 AM.

In the morning, I slept in a little, then my Grani brought us home around 1PM. Besides doing this, I am resting because I have football practice tonight.

Overall, I can't even pick the best part of the trip because I liked it all. Some of the things I really liked were the wildlife, especially the sea otters and all the berries, the gold panning, the train and the mushing dogs. The only thing I didn't like is that I had to come home. I really wished I could have done some more hiking around Mt. McKinley too.

Alaska is AMAZING and I can't wait for my next adventure!   Marcus J.