It’s here. State number 50 – Alaska! It is hard to believe we are almost done with our quest to visit all 50 states before Graduation. Technically, Michael graduated last week, but we are still counting this as success. The travel notebook is ready, the check list is done and the Browns are on their way!

An early afternoon departure out of Raleigh made for a leisurely morning to finalize all our last minute things, and then were off!

To avoid some of our prior close-call/sprints through the airport, we arrived today with plenty of time. It takes a full day of travel to get to Anchorage – RDU to O’Hara, and O’Hare to Anchorage. So we grabbed a snack/lunch in Raleigh, and jumped on the first leg of our travel day.

We made it to Chicago! Quick layover and we were right back in the air for our 7-hour cross country flight to Anchorage!

Once we crossed into Canada, the clouds cleared, and the topography and scenery were amazing! It was so gorgeous, it looked fake!

Someone may have gotten annoyed with me leaning over to take photos🤪

The interactive maps on the plane were really cool… see Mt Macon on the map, see Mt Macon out the window.

WE MADE IT! Welcome to Alaska! NUMBER 50!!!

Bags + 1 cooler ✔️ Rental Car ✔️ (Seriously, if you aren’t an AARP member for discounted car rental, you’re crazy!) and we were on our way! Not a bad backdrop for a city.

And it’s not Mom’s Cafe, but maybe it’s a satellite location?

Alaska is 4 hours behind East Coast Time. Our 8pm arrival was midnight to us, and our 9pm dinner was 1am to us. And some of us do not adjust as well to the time change.

By the time we finished dinner, it was 10pm here (2am at home). This is 10pm in Alaska.

I for one am looking forward to seeing how much Alaska we can pack into 20-22 hours of sunlight every day! Some people are not😂 We can do some serious Clark -Griswold-vacationing with that much daylight!!