RANGELEY – Police Chief Phil Weymouth drank cold, crystal-clear water from a melting glacier, panned for gold and cruised the coast of Alaska in what he says was an experience of a lifetime.

Weymouth said he and his wife, Annette, and another couple came back with a new understanding of what the state is like and memories they’ll talk about for years.

If he was 20 years old, Weymouth said, Alaska would be the place for him.

They flew into Fairbanks and worked their way to their cruise ship stopping at places in between.

The weather was similar to Maine, Weymouth said, but it changes constantly to extremes.

It has extremes from 85 to 90 degrees to 67 below zero, he said.

Some areas were rainy and foggy and others sunny 24 hours a day.

“Alaska is referred to as a desert but it also has a rain forest,” he said. “It rains all but 44 days a year in Ketchikan.”

The state has roads to nowhere, about as many planes as cars and has pods of population and then none, he said.

During their trip they went 50 miles into the 6-million-acre Denali National Park.

“We saw 12 grizzlies, a wolf, 40 to 50 caribou, eagles” among other wildlife, Weymouth said.

“Eagles fly around there in Alaska like crows fly around here in Maine,” he said.

Part of their tour was a trip on a double-decker observation train that snaked through ponds, river valleys and mountains.

People in the middle of nowhere waited at the tracks to get on the train.

It was amazing to ride by all the greenery and then look up and see snow-covered mountains, Weymouth said.

They visited Glacier Bay and saw glaciers hundreds of feet tall, solid ice, kind of bluish in color that kind of looked like snow, he said.

A lot of people in Alaska don’t believe in global warming, he said, because they say for every glacier that melts another forms.

They visited the entrance to the Yukon Gold Rush in Skagway and then on to Juneau, state capital of Alaska.

“There are three ways to get to Juneau, boat, plane and birth canal,” Weymouth said. “There are no roads to Juneau.”

They landed on a glacier via helicopter where a brook formed from the melting water.

“It was crystal, crystal, clear and cold, cold, cold, water and you can drink it,” he said. “It even tasted clean. The views were unbelievable.”

People think it costs a lot more for items in Alaska, he said.

“We did not pay any more in populated areas in Alaska than we did in any other tourist town,” Weymouth said.

Milk was about $4 a gallon in populated cities, but out in the bush it was $8 a half-gallon, he added.

Not only did he experience the highlights, he learned about the state.

“I didn’t know what Alaska is, and now I do. There’s a lot of history to that state I don’t think people realize,” he said.

Many people went to the state in the early years and didn’t make money from panning gold, instead they made it from services they provided such as boarding homes, home-cooked meals, laundry operations as well as some illicit ways, he said.

“The whole place is interesting.” Weymouth said. If I was 20 years old. I’d move there. There is so much opportunity.”