9:35AM ADT: It may come as little surprise that I am fond of traveling to new airports that I have never seen to see how they operate and work and what sort of sites they are placed in relative to the towns and cities they serve. Right now it is mid-morning in Anchorage, Alaska, and I am sitting at my gate about half an hour or so before the time that first class boards here. Since the schedule for the milk run shows that it slows the trip from Anchorage to Seattle considerably to stop at airports I have never seen before like Juneau, Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan, the question is whether or not this slower travel and this increase of stops is worth it. Having watched the enjoyment of a British YouTuber in doing the reverse trip of going from Seattle up to Juneau one day and then Juneau to Anchorage the next day, it will be curious to see if I enjoy the experience of seeing such small towns and airports as much as he did. In one sense, though, it will definitely be a worthwhile trip, and that is in the going to unfamiliar places as well as the accrual of more legs for my Alaska Airlines elite status, both of which are definitely worthwhile on their own terms apart from any aesthetic pleasure in seeing new areas.

8:34PM PDT: It is rather odd that it took 11 hours for me to have a brief bit of time for me to write before I rush across Sea-Tac International Airport for my last flight of the day, but that is what happens when one sits in the first seat of an airplane. With the bulkhead not allowing computers to be stowed anywhere other than the storage above the seats, and with a lot of short flights, it simply was not possible for me to use the computer as I had intended to do. Consider that a lesson learned for next time, though. The milkrun was enjoyable, although the clouds and rain did prevent me from having the sort of view I wanted throughout most of the flights, the countryside of the peninsula of Alaska is immensely beautiful and there is a lot to enjoy in seeing the small towns of Southeastern Alaska on various islands or crowded against the coastal ranges that limit expansion. Today I added four airports to ones I had flown, and both Juneau (the first of the new airports) and Ketchikan (the last of them) were sizable enough. Unsurprisingly, both Petersburg and Wrangell were very small airports, although I did get invited by the person who sat next to me who was traveling from Anchorage to visit family in Petersburg to see what Little Norway was like when the town of Petersburg celebrated Norwegian independence. While there was only one snack, a tasty sandwich and salad, on the flight from Ketchikan to Seattle, the flights were full of snacks and friendly conversation with the stewardesses. I got tease one of them about her flare, asking her about the meanings attached to each of them, and she told me after we took off from Ketchikan that I had memorized the boarding instructions from having heard them so many times from taking off five times today, which is certainly true enough. Alas, I do not have time to say more because our flight landed in terminal N and I must race to terminal C to catch my next flight, which starts boarding in about twenty minutes or so. Such is the life of a traveler.

8:50PM PDT: I was able to catch a relatively quick train and my gate was close to where the train disgorged customers, so I have about ten minutes or so before I board my plane for Portland. Overall, I have to say that milkruns are interesting to take. You see a different sort of passenger on a milkrun than you see on a direct flight. The people on such a plane are either those who, like myself, enjoy unusual and distinctive (and not necessarily the fastest) way from point A to point B, or are traveling to or from small towns with small airports and perhaps a bit of a laid back attitude to being at a gate in a timely fashion, which can make for somewhat unpredictable experiences when one goes to airports that only have a flight or two a day. Perhaps someday I will have business in such small towns that allows me to explore them, but flying into them is certainly interesting enough, as it gives a sense of the logistics of travel to small towns. As it is, I am about to board for Portland, and so this can be considered to be a successful exploration of the obscure airports of Southeastern Alaska.