Hope, Alaska

If you don't follow me on social media (Instagram or Twitter especially) then you might not know that I traveled to the ends of the Earth two weeks ago. Well, not the ENDS of the Earth, since we all know the world is round, but somewhere close.

Way up in Alaska, 2 hours south of Anchorage, on Resurrection Bay, there lays a little town called Seward. I visited Seward, but that's not what this post is about. Seward was beautiful, albeit incredibly windy and painfully cold, so we spent much of our time in Seward inside, or inside the car.

But this post is not about Seward. This post is about Hope, Alaska, a tiny place we drove to on our way back to Anchorage. There's no driving *through* Hope. Hope is a destination, 15 miles off the Seward Highway. President Obama visited Hope while he was in Alaska recently, but there were no "Obama ate here" banners in Hope. In fact, most places were closed for the "off season," which falls between the end of summer and the start of ski season.

It had snowed recently, but not enough to count for Alaska, so we were able to get there pretty easily in Jess's Subaru. She pulled the car onto "Main Street" and we drove down to where Resurrection Creek meets Cook Inlet. A lot of the inlet was frozen over already, and I did my best to look like the tourist I was for any locals who were watching from their cozy cottages, by slipping on the ice and nearly falling ("MUST PROTECT THE CAMERA") and wandering around taking pictures of the frozen inlet.

I was in Alaska for four days, and the phrase most-uttered the whole trip (other than "I'm cold") was "it's just so beautiful!" I used up all the synonyms for beautiful while I was in Alaska, and even tried coming up with some new ones. I know my travel companion must have been sick to death of my broken-record mantra. Maybe that's why she took me to Hope. Because Hope, Alaska is the kind of place that makes you shut the heck up and just absorb it. The cold of the air, the warmth of the low-hanging sun, the pure crystal blue of the water and sky. There's a peace and stillness in Hope that makes you never want to leave.

These are only a small portion of my trip to Alaska - we were in Hope for less than half an hour, after all - but it might have been my favorite part. I highly recommend you go. Have you been somewhere in the world that makes you feel like Hope?