Sunrise in Monument Valley

Sunrise in Monument Valley

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Home from Alaska

We returned to Anchorage for our flight home.t he taxis in Anchorage had a phone number you couldn't forget-222-2222. I bet they had lots of customers. with an easy number like that


Before our plane left we had time to kill, so we first had lunch and drove down to Bird Creek south of Anchorage. The day was again cloudy and there were only a couple of people fishing on the creek. We did see lots of Eagles on our trip. this one was a bald eagle, but we also saw golden eagles in Denali.






Our kitties were very happy to see us come home. We were pretty happy ourselves. The flight was very long and we were very tired. The trip was really great, but we are very glad to be home with our kitties. They have been very attached since our arrival.
Until the next adventure.


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Fairbanks and the Richardson Highway

We left Denali headed for Fairbanks. The views were beautiful, The railway followed the highway from Seward to Fairbanks.

We stopped for breakfast at Rosie's Cafe in Healey. I ordered 2 hot cakes. Rosie informed me "you want one". I said OK? This one hot cake was the biggest one I had ever seen. It was one inch thick and lapped over the sides of my large dinner plate, Good thing I didn't order two.

This is the Museum at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. We had a great visit there.



From Fairbanks we headed to North Pole.............Alaska that is.









Headed down the Richardson Highway towards Anchorage we finally spotted some wild life. We saw a mother and baby moose along the road. It has been very surprising that we haven't seen more wild life along he roads.


Views of Denali.
























This is the Alaska Pipeline. You can see how it zig zags though the landscape on the way to Valdez.






Along the highway was a pond full of beautiful swans----must be swan lake.

These picture's are just some of the views we saw along the way.

































Monday, September 7, 2009

Talkeetna and Denali Tundra Wilderness

Hatcher's Pass on the way to Talkeetna and Denali.
This was a little lake on Hatcher's Pass. The water was unbelievably clear.




On our way to Denali we stopped in Talkeetna. The little town was used as the basis for the TV show Northern Exposure that was on TV years ago



This is Nagely's store in Talkeena--built in 1921.




Mt McKinley.




Mt McKinley. We were very lucky to see it since it is only visable about 20% of the time due to too many clouds being in the way.








Our cabin in Denali--The Fisherman











The Nenana River.






Inside Denali NP.





This picture of Mt McKinley was taken about 35 mile away and from the north side inside Denali NP.


Denali has a little boardwalk of shops along the road..... and yes I actually found one with fabric.


This was a restaurant out side the park. We ate there 3 times the food was so good, Great salmon, halibut and plenty of it.



We took a 9 hr bus tour into Denali National Park The driver River White was wonderful and we had a great tour. We saw all of the major types of animals in the park.

This is one of the grizzlies we saw.


Two of the caribou we saw.




This grizzly was trying to get something out of the tree.




It was so exciting to see so many grizzly bears in the wild. We must have seen at least 5 on our one trip into Denali.




We stopped for a long time and watched 4 wolves playing together and chasing each other, They were just having the best time running all across the tundra.



We saw many caribou along the tundra.



There were lots of dall sheep hanging out and grazing on the mountain side.



We saw many very large male moose with huge racks. In one area there was one large male and 5 females all traveling together.