alvin's blog

My favorite Talkeetna bumper sticker:

"Talkeetna: A quaint little drinking village with a climbing problem."

What else can you say about a town that has a bar in the back of the grocery store?

If I'm here next summer I'm going to have to try climbing Denali. Hopefully they have stairs. Or maybe an elevator. :)

I talked to another local today who talked about the "magic" of wintertime here in Talkeetna (and Alaska in general). He said once the snow falls it stays white until April. He used to live in Iowa, and also said that it's surprisingly not that cold here, and that 40-below here is like 5-below in Iowa.

Another local at the Free Box told me that darkness in the winter here is greatly exaggerated. She said there is typically at least six hours of light per day. Time will tell.

Whew, I've been all over the place lately, including cars, hikes, boat rides (with whale sightings), bus rides, dog sled rides, and airplane rides, but first I need to take care of a problem. My RAV4 has sprung a leak, and the floorboard on the front passenger side was holding more than an inch of water last night.

It's still raining off and on here, so the car now looks like a wounded soldier, with a plastic bag and other plastic wrap covering the right-front side. Fortunately I don't need to drive anywhere, but I'd sure like to dry out the front of the car a little more.

Anchorage, Alaska pictures: The final day of the trip with my mom and aunt lands us back in Anchorage. They're leaving town tonight on a very late flight, so we grabbed a local floatplane tour ride from Rust's Flying Service this morning, followed by a trip to the zoo.

The floatplane ride was about as good as any airplane ride I've ever had: very smooth riding, with water landings so soft you didn't even know you had landed. Our Anchorage plane ride cost $245 per person, but I thought it was well worth it.

The Alaska vacation for the ladies will be ending soon, but there was a beautiful sky in Healy, Alaska this morning:

Later, just a few miles south of Denali National park, we spotted a few moose having a breakfast by the railroad tracks:

Day 5 of the trip finds us inside Denali National Park. While I have a ton of pictures of mountains and wildlife, I'll just go with these three.

First, a peak we got at Denali on the drive in:

I'm going to post this sign on the cabin when I get home. Nothing worse than a squirrel that knocks on the window at 8 a.m. expecting to be fed.

Day 3 of the trip landed us in Talkeetna, Alaska. I've already posted pictures from here, so I'll skip those.

Day 4 took us farther north, up to Healy, AK, about 11 miles north of Denali National Park. On the way to dinner at the local golf course we ran into a female moose and a few of her babies. Unfortunately my camera was in the back of the car, so I had to park the car and get out and get the camera, but they didn't leave.

Day 2 of our Alaska vacation found us in Seward, Alaska, where we lucked into a really terrific boat ride our on Resurrection Bay. We hit the road, er, the water, around 10:30 a.m. and took a six-hour cruise. I would have been happy with another six hours, it was incredible.

Our Seward boat ride started with a visit from a humpback whale:

(Day 1 of our Alaska vacation - Seward, Alaska.)

I'm touring the Alaskan countryside this week with two relatives, my mom and her sister. I'm trying to play it safe with them, so Day 1 of the trip is back to familiar stomping grounds in Seward, Alaska.