Our 2007 Driving Tour Of Alaska - Talkeetna, Day 8
May 15, Day 8. Up early, had breakfast at the restaurant shown in the center of the second of the photos below, then we headed out of Seward for Talkeetna. Before we left town though, we took a couple of shots to illustrate the scenic nature of Seward. The first two were taken from town center, one toward the East across the "Small Boat Dock" and the second was taken by turning around and taking a shot of the other side of town, toward the West. At the airport on the way out of town, we took the third image as two photos which were stitched together to make the panorama.
Since this was a travel day, the weather was nice - as it has been for two of the three travel days so far. The sun was out and it was partly cloudy. It got even better during the day so that by afternoon, it was absolutely beautiful. We took AK-9 back to the junction with AK-1 which we would follow to Anchorage and transfer to AK-3 to Talkeetna. We had made reservations earlier at Denali National Park for May 16-22 and didn't want to get there early so we decided to stay tonight at Talkeetna. Talkeetna was billed in our travel guides, as the "jumping off point" for climbers of Mt. McKinley and one of the better places to get an unobscured view of the mountain - the highest peak in North America.
Again, the scenery was continuously spectacular. We only took one photo to show how closely the mountain sides came to the highway. The snow was just off the highway - and it was mid-May! It was pretty high here and at lower elevations, there was a lot less snow than when we got in a week ago. The snow was melting and there were hundreds of small cascades and streams like the one in the second photo.
First stop was a side trip to Hope Alaska - don't ask why. Hope is interesting. It was a mining town during the gold rush. It originally had no name so the local inhabitants - mostly miners - decided to name the town after the next person to step off the boat. The next person off the boat was a young man named Percival Hope. As you can see from the photos, Hope isn't very impressive. However, there is a lot of the town that is not on the original "Main Street". This is the historic downtown section and was pretty lifeless this early before the tourist season. There were additional craft shops and other small businesses on this street and even more of these as well as historic structures in the part of the town off the main drag.
We didn't stop for much on the drive north. We saw Dall Sheep high on the mountain side at mile marker 106 along Turnagain Arm just out of Anchorage and a lot of Ducks, Terns and Gulls in the lakes and streams along the highway but we only stopped once to try to photograph any of them.
We negotiated Anchorage with no difficulty and got to Talkeetna around 4:00 PM. As we approached Talkeetna, we topped a hill and there, clear as a bell, was Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley is so high that it makes its own weather and, according to our travel guides, its peak is almost always covered by clouds. It is rare that it can be seen this clearly so we pulled into a turnout and admired and photographed it. We went into town and checked into a cabin, had dinner and came back to get some more photos of the mountain. The first was photographed to show the peak while the second was made up of three photographs stitched together to show the whole range - at least the part that was visible from our vantage point. While we were there, a local resident came by and commented that the mountain was visible without clouds obscuring the peak for only thirteen days last year. So we counted ourselves lucky to see it on our first trip to the area!
We had dinner at a local restaurant named Latitude 62. Went to bed early in preparation for driving to Denali National Park tomorrow. It is close enough that we should have time to see some of the park during the afternoon.