Actually July 31:

Today's amazing Alaska fun fact:  in Alaska, it's illegal to whisper in someone's ear while moose hunting.  

Hey, google it.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon (sat, July 30), we drove our rented Chevy Traverse LT from  Anchorage east and north to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It seems hard to imagine a more scenically spectacular drive.  Great waves of glaciated mountain ranges rolling off into the distance in all directions.

The above-mentioned national park was pretty incomprehensible too.  It's the largest of u.s. Parks, about ten times the acreage of Yellowstone.  The acreage of glaciers within it would cover Connecticut.  It has nine of the highest 16mountains in the u.s.  And so on. It is virtually roadless and trail less, and we didn't quite have the time or equipment or energy to venture very far into it. Even so, quite worth the drive.

Here's just one final amazing thing we learned at this park.  Millions of dead salmon carcasses lay around in the rivers, because they die after swimming sometimes hundreds of miles uphill to spawn. But the carcasses are GOOD for the rivers. Besides providing food for bears and others, their decaying bodies provide a lot of nutrients to the rivers, which would otherwise be pretty sterile.  These nutrients are ingested by tiny life forms, which are eaten by bigger life forms, etc. , including the salmon babies ("fry") .  A most interesting lesson in ecology.