The Last Frontier

We made it to Alaska! Thankfully the flight was uneventful – nobody punched the flight attendants, nobody swore and the toddlers in front of us actually slept most of the time.

We woke up around 5am – our bodies felt like it was 8am so we thought that was a win! But most places don’t open quite that early and we were going to need some coffee before we headed up Parks Highway to Denali. Luckily we found some and started out in the rain. We felt fortunate that it wasn’t snow! The weather statement form the National Weather Service said that Denali National Park was expected to get 1-3 inches of snow – at the lower elevations!

We stopped for lunch in Talkeetna about 1/2 way between Anchorage and Denali. It’s a cute, quirky little town. We found the only brewery – ok there’s only about 10 businesses so it wasn’t that hard…and had some delicious halibut – a very mild fish with the texture of chicken. It’s also one of the few places in the world that make birch syrup. It tastes a lot like maple syrup only they need A LOT more trees to make birch syrup compared to maple. I know this because they gave us a tour 🙂

It rained the rest of the way to Denali 😦 But we got glimpses of the mountains surrounding us. Tomorrow it’s supposed to stop snowing/raining and it’s going to be spectacular. I’m sure of it!

After a 6 hour plane ride and a 4 hour car ride, Jon was happy to get out of the car and arrive in Healy where we’d be spending the next 3 nights. The bed and breakfast type hotel we are staying at sits on the edge of a beautiful lake.

As I sit here writing this I can see the mountains (and a bit of blue sky) across the lake. The owners are originally from Minnesota – Warroad and Wadena. The owner told us the ice went out on the lake about 2 weeks ago! Apparently a moose and her calf hang out around the lake so we should see them before we leave. Uh Oh, Jon sees the moose! He’s grabbing his camera… (The WiFi here is terrible so this might be light on pictures) It indeed is the moose! And he took a picture. And it’s bright enough to do that at 10:00! The sun is still about 2 hours from setting. This all happened in real time… sorry for the play-by-play.

It’s hard to get a grasp on the time with such long days. The suns sets around midnight and rises around 4am. It was 8:00 before we realized we should think about eating dinner. Healy has a very cool brewery called 49th Street Brewing. When we showed up it was a 60 minute wait! They told the party of 7 in front of us it would be 3 hours – and then changed their mind and told them the kitchen would be closed before they could seat them – yikes. Luckily we were seated in ~45 minutes. Loved the atmosphere, the food, the beer and our fabulous server. That’s a good thing because I think it’s the only restaurant around. You think I’m kidding!

I’m writing this in our room at 10:30 – without any light on! This midnight sun is crazy. I can’t get over it!!!!

Tomorrow we head into the park. We’re taking the Tundra Bus Tour. It’s the only way to get deep into the park since cars aren’t allowed. We hope the skies clear and we can see the Big 5.