Founded in 1915 as a railroad camp, Anchorage has grown into Alaska's largest city and main travel hub. On March 27, 1964, a natural disaster of incredible proportions struck Anchorage and south-central Alaska: the Good Friday earthquake. This earthquake measured 9.2 on the Richter Scale; the largest ever recoorded in North America and because Anchorage lies only 80 miles from the epicenter, damages to structures ran to the hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, Anchorage constitutes more than 40 percent of the state's total population. Anchorage is bordered to the east by the Chugach foothills, to the west by Cook inlet, to the south by Potter Marsh and to the north by World War II military bases.

Our shore excursion involved an 8-hour train ride to the south of Anchorage with a short stop in Whittier. Our travels to Whittier took us through two mile-long dark tunnels which are also shared by the automobile traffic, but not at the same time. The car and truck traffic was being held at both ends of the tunnel during our passing. We then continued over twenty miles towards Seward where we viewed several glaciers which can be seen only by train. This was one of our two days of rain on our cruise.