Jack Flaherty 8-18 Media

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment of Jack Flaherty’s series about his family’s Alaskan adventure.

Our next stop was Mount Alyeska, not far from Anchorage.

By the way, you go up the mountain in this box that goes up on a cable. We drove up to the parking lot for it.

After parking, we went to the booth where you get your passes. Then, we went to the waiting area. We waited for a while, then the gondola came. It unloaded the people on one side, then opened for the other people and us on the other. We hopped in, and we were going up after a wait much shorter than the one on the airplane.

As we went up, I started having scary thoughts. If the cable busts, you’re not only falling, you’re also gonna tumble down afterwards. We got to the top, got off, and immediately went to find the best view possible. (That’s what you do, right?) We found a decent one and took one mill — just kidding! Four pictures.

Andrew, Mom and I went up this little part of a mountain. After that, that was the biggest workout I’ve ever experienced. We had an even better view than before. Climbing a mountain is confusing to me. You spend so long climbing it, then you’re at the top for a solid three minutes, and you have to climb down.

We had to climb down. After the intense climb down, we kept walking around. We took more pictures and came to a gift shop. There was a lot of stuff there, including a cute and dumb sticker of a moose with shades. He looked very summery, but I was confused because it was super cold here. Especially on this mountain.

We then ate and went to bed. We woke up the next morning with nothing to do. We went on a walk and came back with, again, nothing to do. We wanted to go to Seward (another city in Alaska), but Andrew said that we had gone here all the times that we went here.

We decided to go to the zoo. The zoo (I will be absolutely shocked if you don’t know this) is a place with Alaskan animals. (Duh!)

We got in the car and made the long drive to it. When we got there, we looked at as many animals as we could. There was a ferocious free-for-all with some grizzly cubs. Then the sow said to them, (I think) “Stop, I am trying to sleep, also one of you is going to get a major concussion.” The cubs didn’t even listen.

We saw some moose that didn’t even look at us and moved nothing but their ears. We saw a cute, curious baby deer.

We also saw this musk ox that had a sign on its fence. It said, “Hello! Don’t come near my fence, please. I am very grumpy these days.” We got a little too close while reading it that it ran toward us through the fence. That was a very traumatizing moment.

The black bear cubs were a lot more chill. We saw a zookeeper feed them these gross buns. Then we went to the gift shop to look around.

The next morning, we had to get packed because we were leaving at noon. We ate breakfast and sat around a little more. Then Grandma and Grandpa came for a goodbye picture. We took it, and they wished Mom and Dad some traffic safety.

We drove to Anchorage. We went to a Subway, where we got stuff that we would eat for lunch on the plane. We drove and drove until we came to the airport. It was not as big as the one in Minneapolis, but it was bigger than the one at home. (a lot bigger, as in, it makes our airport at home look like the airport bathroom)

We said goodbye to our rental car (I was not really sad, exactly) and went into the terminal. It was the same procedure. We checked in, went through security and sat in a random chair for a while. After sitting for a very long time, we finally saw the plane.

I’m a little sad that the trip is over, but also happy to be home! This was a fun trip, and I can’t wait to go again!!

Jack lives in Marquette and enjoys relaxing and reading. He wants to be an author, a pilot and an architect. He loves watching planes and flying in them. Jack also enjoys seeing huge buildings, such as skyscrapers and museums. He enjoys eating pizza, cookies, cupcakes and brownies. He also loves video games, board games and card games.