Alaska (summary 2)

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Hello again:
I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend. I worked in the yard most of it, but there was much to do after being "in the last frontier" of Alaska. (That's how my yard was looking.)
I ended the last time in Denali. After the awesome plane ride to and around Mt. McKinley, I met up with Shirley, Mike and Linda for the 5 hour train ride to Talkeetna. The distance is only 121 miles but the train only goes about 25 miles an hour. It is a "scenic" train, not a "transportation" train. And the scenery was beautiful. The railroad goes along the river through the mountain valleys, so there are often high mountains one minute and crossing river gorges the next. (As Shirley and I have been watching the video I took, it brings to mind the old saying "pictures don't do it justice". As nice as the videos and pictures are, the beauty and magnitude are not captured. I will still get some pictures posted later for you to see.)
We arrived in Talkeetna, population about 300, near store closing time, so the girls had to hurry to get everything looked at. Mike and I wandered the streets. (two of them 😊 ) I heard some bluegrass music, so I followed my ears to find a band playing behind a tavern. The locals were there drinking and dancing. I learned that the tavern was originally a hotel and that one of our early Presidents (I'll remember which one later) stayed when visiting Denali. He got food poisoning and died three days later. (The story goes that he was there with his wife and mistress (truth), and that his wife poisoned him (speculation).) While walking the streets, Linda and Shirley heard a local say to another local "I'll sure be glad when these tourists get out of here." The Alaskan people are a very rugged people and like their space. Half of the 600,000 thousand inhabitants live in Anchorage, so that leaves a lot of space for the rest. (When people say the new VP nominee was mayor of a small town of 9,000 they don't realize that in Alaska that is a large town. I believe Fairbanks and Juneau are 2 & 3 in size with around 35,000.)
After our "tour of Talkeetna", we got on a bus and rode the hour to the Princess Hotel Lodge. It is a sprawling place that was built so to view Mt. McKinley, whenever it decides to show itself. We were eating dinner and Mike asked the waitress "if we could see the mountain, where would we look". She said "out that window". Mike said "there it is now" and she said "no, that's just a cloud". Turned out Mike was right and as we ate, the mountain began to appear. By 9:30 we could see an outline and about 10:15 p.m. Mike and Linda saw a good view. Then about 15 minutes later the clouds covered it up again. (Shirley's shoulder was hurting and we had gone back to the room, so we missed it. I probably should say by this time in the trip that Linda's voice was back, Mike's head cut was healing and my poison ivy was going away. Only Shirley was still dealing with pain. I must say though that she was a trooper and stayed up with everything. I was very proud of her.)
From Talkeetna we took the train to Whittier, just south of Anchorage. There we got on the ship and got settled in. Our stateroom was very comfortable and had a balconey that gave the feeling of extra room, plus a beautiful view. We left Whittier about 1:30 a.m. for our voyage south. (Whittier has a population of 187 and they all live in one building that was left standing after the 1984 earthquake. (Oh boy, memory lapse again--was it '84 or '64?) Anyway, there is nothing there except a railroad deadend at the the ship dock.)
Well, this is a good place to stop until next summary. I do have to go to work 😊 .
Take care and God bless...
Bill

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