Today, my husband and I (and Robin, too) flew to Anchorage, Alaska, for a week of vacation before the expedition. We flew from Fresno, California to Los Angeles, California, to Anchorage, Alaska. Here I am with Robin ready to go. Our jet is in the background.
I had three huge bags of luggage. What I learned at check-in was that a third piece of luggage, no matter how small, costs an additional $80!!! I did a quick reorganization of my luggage and somehow placed all the contents of my third bag into the other two, including the bag itself. I was amazed that I was able to find enough nooks and crannies to fit it all, but I did! All was well until it was time to fly to Anchorage from Los Angeles. We were delayed. Robin and I decided to take a nap while we waited.
We finally left LA into the dark starry night at 9:00 pm with the bright lights of the City spread across the land for miles adjacent to the pitch black edge of the coastline. We had five hours of flight ahead of us. I read for awhile then went to sleep. The most amazing sight appeared to me when I woke up about an hour before we landed in Anchorage. It was 1 am California time, midnight Anchorage time. I looked out the window and there to the north of us was a band of light along the horizon extending up to about 10 degrees above it. While I knew the day length in the Arctic was longer than it was in the south this time of year, I marveled at the light I saw so late at night. As we approached Alaska, the band got larger and larger. The colors in this band became more brilliant as we continued north. In fact the light morphed into a rainbow of colors, starting with a bright red band just above ground level, an orange band above it, followed by a narrow yellow band, a faint green band, and a wider light blue band the color of a normal blue sky. But above that, the blue darkened into a starry night sky. And what really stood out was Polaris, the North Star. It was brighter than I have ever seen it! I was wide awake by the time we landed. So, I left a dark Los Angeles 5 hours before and flew north into a sun-lit sky. What a transformation!
[Did you know that the North Star and the Big Dipper constellation are on the Alaska State Flag? 13 year old native American Bennie Benson designed the flag back in 1926.]
During my expedition I will update you on our latitude, longitude, and elevation using a Global Positioning System or GPS unit. If you go to the Google Earth web site http://earth.google.com/ you can place the latitude and longitude into the program and the program will take you to an image of that location. I will give you our coordinates as we move from place to place so you can "see” where we are. Here are the coordinates of where we have been so far:
Kingsburg, my home town: Latitude 36.5197 degrees N, Longitude 119.5465 degrees W, Elevation 97 m
Los Angeles Airport: Latitude 33.94686 degrees N, Longitude 118.40115 degrees W, Elevation 12 m
My hotel in Anchorage, Alaska: Latitude 61.21924 degrees N, Longitude 149.88721degrees W, Elevation 32 m
There is a web site www.sunrisesunset.com from which you can find the sunrise time of anywhere in the world. Many cities are listed, but if you have your coordinates (latitude and longitude) the site will give you your sunrise and sunset times. Comparing Los Angeles to Anchorage:
July 20, 2007 Sunrise time Sunset time
Los Angeles 5:55 am 8:02 pm (20:02 on 24 hr scale)
Anchorage 5:00 am 11:10 pm (23:10 on 24 hr scale)
Did Los Angeles or Anchorage have a longer day July 20, 2007? By how much?