We got up early this morning and got to the train depot in Anchorage to catch the glass domed train to Talkeetna. It was a beautiful ride and only took about 2.5 hours. Once we arrived at our hotel, the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, we changed into some warmer clothes (although it was pretty warm here…in the lower 80’s) and got a ride to the flight seeing service. We were put in the purple group…kind of funny as today is National Leiomyosarcoma Awareness Day and our color is purple. Rich, Lily, and I boarded an 11 seater plane, an otter with skis on it and took off towards Denali National Park and the mountain range there. Rich volunteered to be the co-pilot and sit up front. It was spectacular! We flew for two hours around the peaks that make up the mountain range in Denali National Park. I grew up calling it Mt. McKinley, but it is now called Denali (the largest mountain in North America).We just kept circling closer and closer…at times I felt like the wings were going to touch the sides of the mountains, but the pilot assured us that we were at least a quarter of a mile away. We landed on a glacier and took some pictures, threw some snowballs at each other, and got to watch another plane take off on skis off the glacier heading straight for the mountains in front of us. We caught a ride into Talkeetna and walked around talking to locals and non-locals alike. There is a fabulous photographer named Dora. Her shop is called Dora Aurora because all she takes photos of are of the northern lights. She is originally from San Paulo, Brazil, but has lived here the last 20 years. It was wonderful talking with her and seeing her work. Talkeetna is not very big…and when they are in the high tourist season, like they are now, it is obvious that they don’t have enough staff at their restaurants to handle the larger crowds. After being told it would be over an hour to wait to sit down and eat, we ate at a Talkeetna Takos…a local taco truck. It was pretty good. Rich and Lily got some waffle cone ice cream cones then we started the walk back to the lodge…which is about 2 miles. All that traveling today and I didn’t even have to worry about getting my steps in. I walked about 6.5 miles today. Here are some photos of our day plus a few sunset photos. I found a fuzzy bee bum to photograph whilst waiting for the sun the sun a bit further. I also saw what I thought was a cat but was a porcupine! Can’t say as I have seen one in the wild before. Onto the adventures for tomorrow!
Messina Musings 