Alaska Milkrun

Just finished my Alaska Milkrun trip. The flights I took are:

With an overnight stop at Juneau (JNU), as Alaska Airlines no longer sells the whole milk run as a single flight, it’s on either side of Juneau now (the other side is direct between Juneau and Seattle or Anchorage). And also you are not allowed to buy the whole flight between Seattle (SEA) and Anchorage (ANC) anyways.

This was the 737-700 plane for the first half (SEA-KTN-SIT-JNU) at Seattle airport. Unfortunately I didn’t get the angle for the tail number:

Currently all Alaska milkrun flights are operated by 737-700, and Alaska Airlines kept those 737-700s only for milkruns and other small hops inside the state of Alaska (otherwise it’s only -800s, -900s, and MAXes). They used to use 737-400 combi for milkruns, which is a special configuration that’s half cargo and half passengers.

This was near the US-Canada border before arriving at the first stop, Ketchikan. The border is that “thin” river at the top left of the photo:

This is a glacier at Baranof Island, where the 2nd stop, Sitka, is at. The name of the islands around Sitka sound very Russian, a reminiscence/reminder that the state of Alaska was purchased from Russia:

After Sitka, I arrived at Juneau for the night. My original plan is to go to Tracy’s Crab Shack for dinner. I was really looking forward to it. I took my parents to Juneau in 2016 for the Glacier Bay National Park, and that’s the only meal my dad enjoyed. He’s not accustomed to western food, but he can always appreciate crab. But unfortunately the first half of my milkrun flight was delayed and when I arrived at Juneau it was already past 10pm and Tracy’s Crab Shack was already closed.

The next morning, I went back to JNU for my second half of the milkrun. Juneau also has a lot of seaplanes parked there:

And while waiting for my flight arrive from Seattle, I also saw a few seplanes took off from the runway (not from water) there.

Before my flight arrived, another milkrun flight arrived from Anchorage on the next gate:

Then, my flight also arrived:

For the majority part of the flight between Yakutat and Cordova, the scene is about the snow peaks above the clouds, from the mountains of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (or Klaune National Park on the Canadian side, which from the look of it is the same mountains just on the other side of the imaginary line):

But there’s also a big glacier right before we arrive at Cordova:

After Cordova, we arrived at the final destination of the milkrun, Anchorage. This is the view of ANC before we landed:

I also took my camera with me, but none of the photos I took from the window of the plane with it was actually good, so I ended up only used the photos of my phone instead (except the 2 photos at JNU). At Anchorage I drove my rental car to Potter Marsh to see some birds, and finally put my camera into use. I saw a goose mama with some chicks:

And some beautiful magpies (or at least I think they are magpies, I’m not 100% sure though):

The whole album is at Google Photos.