Denali to Talkeetna then on to Anchorage

Fri 7/4/08 Drove from Denali to Talkeetna then on to Anchorage. We drove through Talkeetna right after the 4th of July parade. There was absolutely no parking, there was hardly room to drive the rv through. We drove out of town and stopped at the first roadside pullthrough and took the bikes off. It was about a 2 mile ride back into town on a nice paved bike/walk path. The town is a small fishing town that has a lot of areas to sign up for fly in fishing or drop off fishing or gear rental fishing. We rode around and took lots of pictures of this quaint town. There was a nice beach area too. There were lots of moose around town. Do you like the beaded moose?


Then back up hill to the camper and back on the road to Anchorage.

We arrived in Anchorage around 5:30 and headed to Dave & Ann’s. Wendy came over shortly after that and we had a great visit.


Dave has a green thumb and his gardens are beautiful. He must have a hundred variety of plants in his yard. We stayed in Anchorage for three days. On day two we all took a walk around downtown where the weekend street markets were taking place. There was a cool mime as well as a juggler.

Then Wendy directed us to all the other things we had on our list for Anchorage. The Ulu Factory, a quilt shop (hehe) the Wildberry place had a large Rock Man or Inuksuk

The meaning behind the Inuksuk is as the travelers were going across the frontier they would make little rock men to show that someone had passed this way before and that you were on the right path. Wendy and I made one of these later while hiking up Flattop Mt. Lots of touring and an exhausting day.
That night Dave and Ann had to pick up their grandson James and his friend David from the airport. They are here from Houston as a graduation gift.
On day three we went on a four hour hike up Flattop Mt. What a great hike that was. It was the most crowded hike we’ve been on so far. I think the reason for that is because it is so close to a populated area. There were people of all ages including walking children and children being backpacked, lots of people also brought their dogs. The dogs all got along, and there were a lot of them. About 45 minutes into the hike a guy was coming back and said there was a bear chasing a moose just a little further up. Wendy and Dave both said we were too high for moose. That is to say they had never encountered any here before.


When we got to the spot the bear was still walking toward the trail and another moose was downwind and just grazing. The moose that the bear had been chasing was over the hill behind us. The boys had gone straight up the last hill instead of sticking to the trail and they had run right into the larger moose. James said it scared him half to death. He snapped a picture, but he was also running so don’t know how that turned out. I hiked about 1100 feet up starting at an elevation of about 2100 feet and the guys went to about 3400 feet, I stopped short by about 300 feet. From there on it was mostly rocks and I knew MM wouldn’t have any fun worrying about me. It was a nice break before heading down.
Here’s a shot of MM and Dave climbing higher. They are in the clouds hehe.

Here’s David and James.

When we finally got back down we were exhausted and starved. Back at Wendy’s place we got to see her home and the gardens that she’s got going around there. She is definitely her Daddy’s daughter. We ate here at Wendy’s. After a nice visit and refueling of our bodies we said our goodbyes. I’m glad we got to stop, I really feel I got to know Wendy more. She is such a sweet, smart, funny girl. Gonna miss her. Dave and Ann headed home with the young boys to keep them company for the next week.