August 29, 2018

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Wednesday Aug 29

We began our 6-hour drive back to Anchorage early. Best news today: the weather cleared once we left Fairbanks! It went from a rainy 7C over the past few days to 18C and sunny. Needless to say we finally got some good looks at Mt. Denali, albeit from some 100-150 km away!

We also had to make some quick pit stops along the way, not called lavatories by Geoff, but lavatrees. There are not many break areas or places to stay along the way. We drove by one very interesting place, not a five-star hotel, but we thought that Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn was an interesting name. Too bad we did not get a photo of that one!

Because the weather was so good, we decided to take a detour back into Talkeetna and check out the shops again in the sunshine, especially Aurora Dora, a renowned northern lights photographer who mounts her photos mostly on steel, making them almost look 3-dimensional. Ferdy and Geoff returned to the riverbank previously photographed in the rain. We were pleasantly surprised to get the best view of Mt. Denali of the day, with the raging river waters as a foreground. Ferdy was told that the river bank at this spot has receded as much as 30 meters since last year, because the Alaska Railroad had to build a stone retaining wall to prevent the railway trestle from sliding into the river, which in turn redirected the current towards this shore.

We checked into our hotel at Anchorage airport to prepare for our flight to Vancouver on Thursday.

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Comments

[Louise Smith]

Beautiful Alaska
You captured the beauty of the scenery. I love Alaska!