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So the bottom line is, I need 5000 miles on American or their partners fast!   The quickest way is to take a trip, and I find a ridiculously cheap net special from San Diego to...Anchorage, of all places.  Well, I've never been to Alaska before and it has Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America, which makes it kinda a wonder of the world.  So I book the flight, and it's off to...

Anchorage
I fly into Anchorage, a quiet mountain town which is basically a base for day trips of Mt. McKinley in the nearby Denali state park, or glacier cruises to see Kenai or the Prince William Sound.    Imagine the Northern Exposure town with souvenir shops and museums and that's pretty much Anchorage.   The souvenir shops sell furs and Eskimo products that would make a Scrabble player's day, including the ulu, a curved dicing knife, and qiviuet, musk ox wool for scarves and caps that are four times warmer than sheep wool.   And since Russia is next door, there are also a few Russian doll shops - with those dolls that fit inside each other.  Now when you're living in the Lower 48, you don't usually think about the fact that the U.S. actually does sea-border Russia (unless you're playing Risk, piling armies into the Northern Territories to fend off an attack from Kamchuka.)

I stop by the log cabin visitors info booth and this girl tells me that I actually don't have enough time to do a proper overnite trip to Denali to see Mt. McKinley, but I can do a day trip to the Portage Glacier.  (very) Cool!

Portage Glacier
I catch an hour-long bus tour to the Portage Glacier, and then board a tour boat that puts out to the glacier.  Our tour guide Amy tells us about ice worms that live in glaciers' freezing temperatures, and if you touch one for even a few seconds, you burn it.  As our boat rounds the mountain, we see the glacier.   It's awesome: a huge wall of jagged ice about 20 stories tall and a half-mile wide which stretches more than four miles back up the mountain valley.  I suddenly have flashbacks of the two other times I've been so jaw-drop "humans are puny" nature-awestruck: the Grand Canyon and Puerto Rico rainforest.  It's amazing seeing the tall jagged ice so violent yet majestic just sitting there...except it's not sitting.   Glaciers move.

I want the boat to get closer for a better photo.  But then I hear this KRRACK thunder-like sound and someone yells. We look to see a huge chunk of ice the size of a house break off and tumble into the water, creating icy ripples the size of a football field.   Fortunately, our boat is far enough away.  Then CRRACK, another chunk of ice on the other side crumbles into the lake.   "Wow, two calvings in 20 minutes," our tour guide Amy merrily chirps.  "We're so lucky this trip!"   Seeing the icy "berg bits" floating in the water, I now suddenly have Titanic flashbacks, so when Amy says, "OK, time to go back," I'm only kinda reluctant.

Our bus then heads back to Anchorage.  I spend the next day touring the Wolf Museum and the nature park museum.  Then I fly back to California.  5,000 miles earned, plus a n-ice glacier appreciation.

This photo was taken around 10 pm - Anchorage doesn't get dark until 11:30 in the summer which is surprisingly easy to get used to.    Anchorage consists of two parts: the touristy downtown with tons of souvenir shops.  Then in the burbs, you can find the Super 16 movie theater, Barnes and Noble, and other strip mall stores that look like everywhere else in the U.S. 

Eskimo totem polls side by side with Russian dolls at the gift shops

I'm a bit shocked to see the street vendors selling reindeer sausage alongside hot dogs. But I'm starving so I try some reindeer, after I find out Rudolph isn't involved.   Reindeer  tastes like any other sausage to me.   Later, at another restaurant, I try a buffalo burger, which tastes like any other burger to me too...maybe my Alaskan taste buds are not well developed...

I swing by the Wolf Museum to learn that while a wolf pack can harrass a herd of caribou for miles over the tundra looking for the weakest link, there has never been a report of a wolf attacking a human.