Today we scheduled a flight around mount Denali with a landing on a glacier. We caught a bus from Denali to Talkeetna, the town Jamie and I visited a couple weeks ago and checked in at the little airport. Our flight wasn’t for a couple hours so we went downtown and had lunch (and shopped, of course) then it was off to the airport for our flight. We picked out our glacier landing boots then boarded a single engine ten…
Tuesday we boarded our bus for a tour through Denali. You have to use their bus because they only allow limited traffic through the park. It was mostly clear day which is unusual there. They say only 30 percent of the visitors get to see the mountain. Hence, the 30 percent club. Which we are now members of. Forgot to get the shirt. Unfortunately even thought it wasn’t cloudy there were some fires in Canada that caused smoke in this…
Monday we left Kenai for anchorage for a scheduled train ride and two nights at Denali national park. Got to another cramped campground but this one had an additional attraction. The train track ran about 20′ from our campsite. The rv actually shook when a train went by. And the engineer was kind enough to give a hello blast of his horn as he went by. Fortunately the train only went by a few times a day. We left the…
Sunday we went on an 11 hour long fishing charter. Today was a mix of good and bad. We had to be out of the house (rv) by 5am for a 6:30am charter in Homer. Bad for me lol. The water out in the ocean was very rough and cold and everyone had trouble fishing and standing. The boat was smaller than advertised when I booked and we had 2 more people join us so it was pretty cramped. But…
Today we drove to Seward for a glacier cruise. It was me, Jamie, her parents and our Canadian friends Dave and Connie. This was a great cruise. Got very up close and personal with some large glaciers that had large clumps of snow and ice falling that sounds like thunder when it hit the water. The captain had to navigate around all kinds of large ice chunks to get close to the glaciers. The crew scooped one of the chunks…
Thursday we drove to Whittier, another small port and fishing village. They actually have cruise ships and large ferry boats that go all the way to Seattle. Not much to Whittier except some cool glaciers, a nice visitors center and a tunnel (one of the longest in America) that is one way and shared by train tracks so you have to go through on a schedule. We had a great lunch of fish and chips at a water front restaurant….
Wednesday Jamie’s parents, Jim and Cheryl came to join us in Alaska for ten days. They had never been there and Jamie was very excited to do some fishing with her dad which she hadn’t done in many years. We walked over to an old orthodox church that was built by the Russians that inhabited Kenai in the 1800’s. Then had another dinner party for the gang. Ricks cousins, Tom and Tamara, brought over some halibut and salmon that were…
Rick has a cousin that owns a fishing business so on the 4th we all went out in their boat and went to a little island town called Seldovia. They had a typical small town 4th of July celebration complete with the mayor and all the locals dressing up for the parade with their mini floats. Did a little shopping, did the beer garden and had a great time. After that we went out and did some halibut fishing. Caught…
Monday we drove to our next stop, Kenai, Ak where we were meeting up with Rick and Gale. In fact, we got the spot right next to them. Another cramped campground but being next to them helped. As we pulled in we ran into the other couple that we took the train ride with. Small world up there in Alaska. So that evening we sat around the campfire and had dinner and cocktails.