Alaska, June 27, 2025, Two Tour Buses

  Ward and I recently took a trip to Alaska. We flew into Anchorage (via a stop in Seattle) and used our friends' house as our home base. I am chronicling our trip here.

Getting ready to check out after breakfast. The hotel complex had 22 buildings similar to this one, where our room was located. Parking was over the hill. That seemed odd to me until Ward pointed out that most of the people staying here had someone bring their luggage from the ship to their room.

After breakfast at the 20230 restaurant at the hotel and another tour around the grounds, we headed for the town of Talkeetna, our destination for the day. Talkeetna was about an hour away, but before we got there, we stopped at the Kalhiltna Birchworks. 

The Talhiltna Birchworks make birch syrup, and they were tapping trees while we were there. They tap 16,000 annually. It takes about forty gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, but it takes about 110 gallons of birch sap to make one gallon of birch syrup. I tasted the birch syrup, and I thought it tasted like molasses.  

Then it was on to Talkeetna. Talkeetna is a town of about 1000 people and began in 1917 as a district headquarters for the Alaska Railroad. Today, it thrives on tourism and is home to many seaplanes. The Denali Park ranger station, located there, is where everyone who wants to climb Mt. Denali must register. 

This was the current status of activity on the mountain.

Main Street is lined with shops and restaurants, and was very busy. I think many of the people we saw were from the lodge we stayed at last night, because I saw two big buses loading for Talkeetna that morning when we were checking out. 

For the time being, we avoided Main Street and did a historic walking tour throughout the town, including a museum. It was a small but interesting museum with two informative movies about the railroad and climbing Mt. Denali.

Ole Dahl Cabin, the oldest existing home in Talkeetna, was built in 1916.
We saw other structures similar to this on our tour.

We ventured onto Main Street for lunch and took a look at many of the shops. Then it was back to Anchorage for some relaxation and a dinner of grilled salmon and baked eggplant.

I took a walk that evening with Bo and Charlie.
This lush creek, along the way, was beautiful.

Somehow, I managed to do a post without a picture of mountains. They were still around and awe-inspiring, but we must have been getting used to them. Or we were still living with the pictures of Mt. Denali in our minds. :)

Until next time...