Winding down

I hate to say it but our wonderful trip to Alaska is winding down.  Hard to believe we have been here almost 8 weeks!  I digress.  So Sunday morning, okay maybe more like Sunday noontime, John and Diane took off for Fairbanks, and we went into the park to the Savage River, the farthest you can go with your own vehicle, to do a hike.  Yeah, maybe we needed a little extra time since we had solved all the world's problems the night before, sounds better than admitting John and I must have caught the same illness:-)

The view from behind J&D's room

Actively solving world problems

John and I very seriously considering the menu

Karen and Diane not

We did have a wonderful short hike along the Savage River, my illness completely cleared up, on a beautiful day.  It is a 2 mile hike along one side of the river, crosses a bridge and comes back the other side.  Interestingly, beyond this point there are no trails or paths in the park.  You can take a bus wherever you want, get off for however long you want, and then jump back on, even several days later.  They want it to be a real wilderness and wildlife preserve so no official trails.

Karen leading the way

Looking back out

Nice day

A little guy we met on the way

A happy Jan

And a happy me!

The next day we went down to Talkeetna, spent the night, walked around the cute little town, talked to some very interesting people including a lady who came and homesteaded in 1959.  Talkeetna is the jumping off place for many of the climbing attempts on Denali, they fly from the airport there up onto a glacier, and then climb the mountain, no we did not do that.  Meanwhile John and Diane were planning their own assault on the Arctic Circle, but the road won.  50 miles up the Dalton a errant pothole jumped out into their path and blew out a tire and destroyed a wheel, so their mission came to an end:-(

We then drove down to Palmer to stock up on groceries for our trip south.  We are going back to Haines now for a week, then plan to take the ferry over to Skagway and then drive down out of Alaska that way.  So Palmer was our last chance for big grocery stores before the lower 48.  We have wanted to have some King Crab sometime on our trip, so the opportunity came up in Palmer, so now I can say we enjoyed some King Crab while here in Alaska.

Grilling up the feast

Devouring the feast!

We somehow with pure serendipity ran into John and Diane one more time.  They were coming north from Valdez, and we were pulling into a campground in Glennallen, just as they were going by!  So another quick visit was enjoyed by all.  Now we are in Tok, where we entered the main part of Alaska northbound, for our trek down the Alcan and then the Haines Highway back to Haines.  The road is terrible down that way, or at least it was on the way north, so we are sadly leaving early tomorrow out of mainland Alaska to give ourselves lots of time.  Back with you in Haines!