Week Twelve~Alaska Trip July 1-6

                                  Talkeetna AK

Very soon after we got settled on Friday some of our Escapee friends came over to visit. Marilyn and Larry Forbes are the SKPs that we bought our new couch from, so they came to visit us and ‘their couch’.

Dennis and Carol Hill followed and soon Sharon and Don Del Rosario came to say hello as well. We have been following all three of their blogs since they arrived in Alaska. They are the Loosey Goosey Last Frontier Gang.  There are six couple traveling together and they are having a wonderful time. We have shared several happy hours and meals with them and we really appreciate their welcome and hospitality.

Last night we had a fish fry. Dennis cooked some of the halibut that Larry caught on their fishing trip. This morning Dennis treated everyone to breakfast. Tonight we are having a steak and corn on the cob cookout. Dennis is a super cook!

We have not seen any fireworks advertised locally, tough to do because it doesn’t ever really get dark here in the summer.
We took a trip into Talkeetna both yesterday and today. There were a lot of tourists there, brought in by the bus load. We had a good time watching people and then came home. There is a lovely playground for kids nearby and also a beautiful Talkeetna Lodge.
 


                                                                                              Talkeetna Lodge
    

                                                                                                 

 

Local home  

             

We have been playing games with the weather. It has been overcast and drizzly several days this weekend. That has made it tough for those of us that want to do a fly by of Mt. McKinley. We were scheduled to go out on the morning of July 2nd. However, it needed to be postponed because of clouds and rain. We have rescheduled for tomorrow morning, July 5th. We are hoping it will work for us.
July 5th dawned a beautiful sunny day. We arrived at the airport around 8 AM and we were in the air around 8:40 AM after a safety and flight explanation. They put us in a Cherokee six seater. We sat in back because it was easier for me to get in and out of the plane that way, no steps. We flew north and had a beautiful view of Denali, the best in about a week, the pilot said. There was a band of clouds across the mountain, but we could see all of the mountain except for what was right behind the cloud. We flew over the cloud to begin with and then we flew below it to see the glacier.  





I have posted 143 pictures to the Picasa Web Album site, so look at that and take the trip with us. There are some pictures that have some reflections from the windows and some that have a bit of the wing showing. I thought about cropping the plane wing out at times, but I wanted to show that these were taken from the air, so I decided to leave the wing visible.

I  will be the first to say that I am not fond of taking the RV up or down a twisty windy mountain road when there is no guard rail on my side, but the plane trip did not bother me at all. The views were just awesome and I don’t have enough words to describe how beautiful the trip was. At one point Phil spotted a rainbow below us and even though I always knew that a rainbow is a full circle, I had never seen it before. We were able to get within 15  miles of the mountain before we had to turn around. When the clouds were so thick that the pilot could not view the ground, we had to reverse direction.

Glacier below.

This was a little close, I was about to tell him he needed to turn, but I guess the pilot could see better than I could……..



Coming back to town.




Safely down and still smiling. It certainly was an experience that we will long remember.



After that outing we headed for a local restaurant to have brunch. The Roadhouse is know for its breakfast menu. Phil and I both had a HALF order of a Sourdough pancake. This is a half order:

There is a plate under there. We were both very full when we finished.

While we were waiting for our breakfast Phil noticed a bobtail cat in the restaurant. He thought that was strange, but gave the cat a scratch. Later, we found out that he had actually scratched 'Mr. Stubbs' who is really the MAYOR of Talkeetna. He was elected with a write in campaign. No everyone gets to scratch the mayor under the chin!

 We were both very full when we finished. We are off to a Jet Boat tour of the river later today, so more later…….