 Alaska, "The
Last (American) Frontier" is the largest of the 50 United States of
America with more than 1,720,000 km2 of land.
Running north to south, Alaska is 1300 km "tall," and east to west
is 2380 km "wide." It is so big that if it was cut in half,
it would be the first and second largest states. Despite
being so large, Alaska has only 626,000 inhabitants.
Denali (Mt. McKinley) is North America's highest point at 6194
meters in height. Alaska is also a land of weather extremes,
with a record low temperature of -62° C (recorded at Prospect Creek
near Coldfood, a few kilometers north of the Arctic Circle) and a
record high temperature of 38° C (recorded at Fort Yukon, 13 km
north of Arctic Circle). Alaska's and Hawaii's record high
temperature is the same!
Alaska's geography includes 55,000 km of coastline, dozens
of mountain ranges, thousands of glaciers covering 41,000
km2, 3.5 million lakes larger than 8 ha, temperate rain
forests, arctic tundra, marshes, and permafrost.
Alaska has been inhabited since prehistoric times by several
Alaska Native
groups. In 1741, Vitus Bering led a Russian expedition of
exploration and claimed Alaska for Russia. During the
following decades, there was extensive harvesting of sea otter
pelts and Russia established a capital in Sitka, Alaska. The
United States of America bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2
million in a deal later called "Seward's Folly" because many
Americans did not understand the great wealth of natural resources
waiting to be discovered. Today, most of Alaska's wealth comes from
oil, mining, fishing, and tourism.
Most Alaskans enjoy 24 hours of daylight during the summer
months because the state is so far north. Of course, that
means there are many long hours of darkness in the winter, but we
compensate by putting lights on our cross-country and downhill ski
trails. We also need the long winter nights to recover from
playing so hard during the long summer "white nights."
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The International Geocache Exchange. What is it?
The "A Piece of Alaska in
Portugal"cache is part of an
international geocache exchange project.
The idea to exchange geocaches
internationally was popularized in this
thread in the geocaching.com forum. You might also like to see
the Nordic
thread.
An international geocache exchange
involves the exchange of a new, fully prepared geocache with a
geocacher from a different country. The caches are filled with
items unique to each cacher's individual locale. Once an exchange
has occurred, each geocacher has the other person's geocache to
hide as their own. Both cachers' names are listed in the
'hidden by' section.
Bargao_Henriques and the
Ladybug Kids met through geocaching when they
were partners for the "Devils in Danger" game. We successfully
completed both challenges and won a set of geocoins in the drawing
at the conclusion of the game. Now, we have placed "A Piece of Portugal in Alaska (GC1050Z)" and "A Piece of Alaska in Portugal
(GC15TAE)."
We hope you enjoy searching for our
caches!
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