It was close to midnight and Frenchy was waiting in her silver SUV. She’d seen a moose on her way to pick us up at the Anchorage airport. (We would later learn that an adult moose is about the same size as an SUV.)

She asked where we were from. Megha answered that she grew up in Houston. Frenchy joked,

“Oh, you know what we like to tell Texans here? If we split Alaska in half, Texas could be the third largest state.”

It didn’t take us long to realize that if Everything is Bigger in Texas, then Everything is Absolutely Enormous in Alaska.

There is one exception. The population of Texas is 26,000,000. The population of Alaska is 730,000. I didn’t forget a zero.

After a pancake breakfast at Frenchy’s B&B the next morning, we gathered the essentials: rental car, four days of food, whiskey, camping fuel, bear spray, and a copy of John McPhee’s 1976 Alaskan travelogue Coming into the Country.

And we headed north.

“IF THERE WERE ONLY 25 PEOPLE IN NEW JERSEY, THEY WOULD THEN SENSE THE PARAMOUNT DIFFERENCE, WHICH IS IN THE UNPEOPLED REACH OF THIS COUNTRY.” -JOHN MCPHEE

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