The 49th state

Emily and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in January. We love traveling, as you probably know if you’ve been reading my columns for a while.

Our honeymoon was spent traveling to Italy and exploring the area of Barga, where her grandparents were from, as well as Rome, Florence and a little bit of Pisa. We mostly just walked around Pisa with our luggage, looking for a hostel on a street near the train station, which shared the same name as a street on the other side of town that the hostel was actually located on. It was my idea not to get a taxi because we could just walk there. We, in fact, could not walk there. I have been responsible for most of our unplanned adventures on trips, which usually make good stories after the event, but it would surprise people that we made it to 20 years together if they saw a full list of my questionable ideas.

Like our honeymoon, we decided to go on our 20th anniversary trip a few months after the actual wedding date. For our anniversary trip, we didn’t go back to Italy. As fun as that would be, we decided to go to a state we’d never been to: Alaska. We’ve been hoping to go for a few years now and finally got there.

My brother has a good friend from college who lives in Anchorage. He moved there following a girl but fell in love with the 49th state instead. He has been a tour guide for most of the members of our family now, sharing his love of Alaska with us. We could not be more thankful for his hospitality and suggestions on where to go and what to do.

Emily and I like to be outdoors, but we decided to treat ourselves a bit on this trip. Instead of renting a car and sleeping in a tent like we usually do to save money, we rented a truck with a camper in the bed. It even had a diesel heater that kept the camper nice and warm. It’s still below freezing most nights in Alaska this time of year, and in multiple places we went, it snowed. We were actually looking for snow and went to Thompson Pass near Valdez to ski out to a small glacier and to do some backcountry skiing. The snow conditions weren’t that great late in the season, but the experience of being in the mountains with Emily and our friends definitely was.

We only spent a couple days skiing since there was so much to explore in Alaska and our friends had to go back to work on Monday. On the way back to the Anchorage area, we stopped at Matanuska glacier, a huge glacier that was only accessible to walk or ski to with guides who were all taking a break before their busy summer season starts. As guides weren’t an option, we found a place you could climb to overlook the glacier, which was a really neat view. I also saw a moose right off the trail on the way up. That was a bit concerning as moose attack more people per year than bears. However, it was busy chewing on a spruce tree and left me alone.

Emily wanted to see whales, so we went out on a small boat from the town of Seward. We unfortunately didn’t see any, but we did find sea otters, which are the world’s cutest weasel relatives, as well as lots of seals, sea lions, mountain goats, ducks and thousands of gulls. We then hiked up a snowy mountain to check out a remote cabin. Last we saw people surfing the bore tide in the Turnagain Arm near Anchorage, where the ocean tide reverses the flow of water every day and makes a strange wave that travels slowly up the arm. We could easily spend months exploring Alaska, but we did as much as we could in a week.

Hopefully, you too will someday get a chance to visit our 49th state if you’re into beautiful scenery and nature. Until next time, keep living the dream and look out for those airline credit card deals. Putting some farm supplies on an Alaska Airlines card will easily score you free passage to a beautiful place.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.