Alaska Part 3-Denali and beyond...

 Our arrival in Talkeetna begin here at K2 aviation.  We could only take ourselves and the camera or a pair of binoculars.  They weighed us in order to make sure the plane was balanced. 

With all the clouds we weren't sure that we'd get to fly or that it would be very pretty.
Boy, were we wrong!

This was the view from the plane!

 

After our flight we had time to walk through the little town of Talkeetna.   It was like walking onto the set of Northern Exposure.  Everybody knew everybody.  The local bar/restaurant was well occupied, the people friendly, and the food was really good! 

I was forced into this photo op! 

 This made me laugh, out loud!  You gotta love small towns!

From the lodge we could see Mt. McKinley as long as the clouds cooperated.

As we headed towards Whittier to board the ship, these are some the sites I captured.

These are eagles!  Beautiful, graceful creatures!

More to come!

Alaska-Part Two-The road to Denali

One of the highlights of our trip was traveling to, through and from Denali National Park.  Denali encompasses over 6 million acres of land.  I can't even fathom that amount of untouched space.  If I had a chance to go back to Alaska again, Denali is where I would choose to spend my time.  On foot.  In a bus.  On foot. In a car.  On foot.  You get the picture.  It's beautiful, even when it's overcast or raining. 

This is the Denali Princess Lodge's main building.  It's a huge resort.

This pizza joint was across the street for the lodge.  The pizza was good, as were a variety or two of the advertised beverages! 

I didn't have my wide angle lens.  I'm not even sure I'd have fit them all in the frame anyway!

 I looked for flowers everywhere.  This is one of the few that I actually found blooming.

 The day we were leaving on the Glass-topped train, we took a walk through the trails surrounding the visitor's center at Denali.

 I was desperate for anything that was growing..even fungus!

This was the highlight of my time in the park.  As we walked along the path some other hikers told us to keep our eyes out for two moose that were eating back in the woods.  As we walked along the trail I spotted one of the two right on the trail several yards in front of us. The cow (female moose) moved back into the woods as soon as she heard us approach.  We stopped when we heard them moving around.   I felt like I was playing "Where's Waldo?" with the cows.  They were brown and so was the woods. 

They knew we were there, without a doubt!

After several shots, one of the cows had had enough of us and stomped a bit and made some snorting sounds.  Her warning for us to move on.  Paul grabbed and said "It's time to go!"  My plea for one more shot didn't go over well, but I did get this shot as she was warning us!

As we continued up the path we could hear the two cows moving around.  Thinking they may come back onto the path we stopped and waited.  Sure enough Paul caught site of one of them coming out from the brush.  I waited until she was fully onto the path to start taking pictures.  I managed about 8-10 before she moved across the path.  I learned later that more people are hurt and killed from moose attacks than bear attacks.  Kinda scary!

This is a stained glass window in one of the park buildings. 

More flowers.  Even dead ones didn't escape my lens!

We looked all over for the bears, but they escaped us, at least while we were on foot.

Sorry, more flowers.

One of our excursions took us on a bus deep into the park.  Only the tour buses are permitted on these roads. Here were were able to see lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery.

And bears!

 

Alaska-Part One, Fairbanks

Paul and I recently took a trip to Alaska to celebrate our 30th anniversary.  He's talked about Alaska since I met him when I was 18 years old.  Back then he was hoping to go with some of the guys he went to school with.  That trip never happened, but the dream never died.
 Last fall we started planning our trip and in the beginning of 2012 decided on a 7-day land tour, followed by a 7-day cruise.  We flew in a day early and stayed 2 extra days in Vancouver.  Our trip started in Fairbanks after taking 4 different planes and traveling for more than 18 hours.  That's what you get with free tickets based on credit card points!
The flights were not without entertainment though.  On the flight from Newark, NJ to Seattle, someone tried to bring a 17 day old monkey on board the plane.  Of course, if the lady had filled out the proper paper work and had the proper cage in which to put the monkey under the seat in front of her, all would have been fine.  It seems that as long as the monkey didn't have a weapon of any kind in it's possession that security wouldn't be at all concerned! 

Here are some of my pictures from Fairbanks.  Please keep in mind that I was on vacation and perfect portraits and landscapes were not my top concern.  In fact there were plenty of times I put my camera down and just enjoyed my surroundings.


From the plane..

View from the lodge in Fairbanks..

Downtown Fairbanks...

The Antler Arch...

The first church in Fairbanks makes for an interesting story.  This church used to be on the other side of the river, pictured above.  The nuns who worked at the hospital on the other side of the river used have to have to walk through the downtown area of town full of drunken gold prospectors to get to the walking bridge to cross the river.  The priests didn't like that idea, so one winter after the river froze over they slid the church across the river so that it was on the same side as the hospital.  The nuns no longer had to walk through the down-trodden part of town!  Problem solved.

One of the few original homes still resting on it's original foundation.  Homes were built small, so they didn't use a huge amount of wood for heat.

Our entertainment on the train that took us to pan for gold!

Yeah, there was really gold in this pan!

See!  $6.00 worth!  Don't ask how much the trip cost, though!

He was much more patient than I was!

This is part of the Alaskan Pipeline.  Every year each permanent Alaskan resident (man, woman, and child)  gets paid a dividend for the oil that is piped out of Alaska.   Records show payments anywhere from $1,000-3,000 depending on the amount of oil that gets piped out.  The oil then has to go south to get refined and then it's shipped back to Alaska.  Their gas prices are higher than here in the Northeast. 
 

Views from the  Discovery Sternwheeller..

This is part of Trail Breaker Kennels, the place where Susan Butcher, a famous dog musher, raised and trained the dogs that helped her win the Iditarod 4 times in 5 years.  Her husband, David Monson, shown here bottom right, still runs the kennels today.  Susan's story is pretty amazing.  The Iditarod is an 1,100+ mile race through blinding snow in temperatures that go as low as 70 degrees below zero across the Alaskan tundra.  Susan won the race with a dog no one, but her, believed in.  She and her husband, David, wrote Granite's story together before Susan passed away at age 51 from leukemia. 

The dogs are so excited to run.  The noise from the barking was deafening!   

  
























The sternwheeller..

Besides all the great food at the Salmon bake, we found lots of reminders of the gold dredging days.  This reminded me of Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel..

All of these original buildings were moved from different places in downtown Fairbanks to this central location.  Local businesses operate out of these houses.  Unfortunately for us, they're  seasonal, and we were there before the season began.

Stayed tuned for more pictures from our trip.  This is just the beginning...