So just how large is Alaska? It’s the largest state in the United States of America and that’s often downplayed by maps. It has a National Park that’s bigger than the country of Switzerland. A park. The image below shows some context of how big it is compared to the mainland United States:
(via: Vellum and Vinyl)
Still not as big as my state of Western Australia.
WA IS 2,5 million sq km. Alaska is only 1.5 million sq km.
So Western Australia is larger then Alaska and Texas COMBINED. That is BIG,
Queensland (Australia’s 2nd largest state) is still bigger than Alaska. Texas would fit inside Queensland almost 3 times.
As an American who had some idea of how big Alaska is, what really got me was the islands and peninsulas. “Mainland” Alaska stretching from east Colorado to east Illinois is impressive — the furthest east and west points stretching literally from the west to east coast broke my brain a bit.