Alaska 2010 (Our Asses Go To Alaska)

Monday 8/23/10

Well, we were up bright and early and made it down to breakfast just slightly after the dining area opened up at 6:00 am..  Holiday Inn Express Anchorage, write that down, cause the breakfasts are something; eggs, bacon or sausage patties, biscuits and gravy, their "famous" hot cinnamon rolls, cereal, bagels, muffins, yogurt, fruit, milks, juices... whew, and they'll even give you doggy bag.

So sometime between the previous night and the end of breakfast we decided to take the trek up to Talkeetna, which is suppose to have the best view of Mt. McKinley; the closest town with a view.  Talkeetna is kind of a jumping off point for people who fly up to Mt. McKinley to climb it, or just take scenic flights around it. Plus there's a burger joint there that made the "Man vs. Food" show because of their huge burger.  Forecast was for sunny skies, so hopefully we would actually get so see Mt. McKinley, which apparently is often hidden by clouds.

So here's the round trip route we took:

Highway 1 North our of Anchorage, to 3, to Willow Creek mining district, across Hatcher Pass, back to 3, to Talkeetna, part way to Petersville and then back to Anchorage.

First obvious thing is, the mountains are huge.  They almost seem unreal at times, like someone painted them in.

About half an hour out of town we saw a sign along the highway that said Mirror Lake.  So, of course we had to check it out to see if it was really like a mirror.  Eh.. it's not bad... probably would have come out better if the the sun wasn't right at us, so I had to hide behind the trees to take the picture.

A humorous public service announcement...

About an hour into the drive...

About 1 hour 15 minutes... 

Which put us at the start of Hatcher Pass... 

where our Asses needed to get out of the car and stretch a bit.

And it just kept getting better... 

Am I boring you yet?

By the way, it should be obvious that some of these photos were taken while driving, so they may be a little blurry... and there are bugs on the windshield.

By this time it was about an hour and 45 minutes into our journey and my GPS was pointing us off the pavement onto a gravel road going up at a very steep angle into the mountains... Game on!  Wife said something like... are you sure?  Yup, it's this way... And this way quickly started producing even better views...

See the skinny little gravel road running through the mountains below... that's the road we were on.... See the lumps in the ground... those are all prairie dog (ground squirrel) homes.

Ok, what's wrong with this next picture... answer is below...

I flipped it upside down... that blue sky is actually the reflection in the lake... Everything in the upper half, except for the gravel and grass in the top left corner, is the reflection...  Wow!!  Talk about a Mirror... 

Follow that road...!

Here's one of the ferocious animals we saw... Actually, we saw a lot of them... darting across the road.. but this one posed for us...

Then more of this stuff...

Let me tell you, with all the photo taking... we were going noplace fast and loving every minute... and our Asses showed up in the strangest places...

Yeah, at this point we're 2.5 hours into our trip... Actually, this is like playing that game "Where's Waldo", except here it's "Where's My Ass"... Looks a little lost in the wilderness...

Well, we eventually made it through the pass and ended up back on Highway 3, where my Ass got stuck in some construction traffic...

And right about 11:30 local time, about 3.5 hours into our trip we saw the first sightings of Mt. McKinley...

It's just this huge thing in the distance... That's 20,000 ft of elevation... it just seems unreal...

Well, it was just about noon, local time, when we pulled into Talkeetna, and our Asses were hungry...

Here, let's get a close-up of that Special...

Yeah, that's right... nearly 5# of stuff on one burger... for 25.95...  Whew!!!  It was tempting, but our Asses wouldn't fit in the plane if they ate that...  That's right... read that... It says with "Fat Ass" sauce... 

The town was small but bustling... I mean, you're looking at it... if you drive much past the end of that road you just ran out of town.

And then after lunch and a brief walk down main street it was time to look for a better vantage point of Mt. McKinley... I had read on the Internet about an Inn just outside of town that had a backyard view, so we moseyed on over and took advantage... At the back of the Inn there was actually an open deck, where they served food... so you could have your meal.. and this view..

By the way, that's like 30 miles away...

As we headed back South we came upon this little piece of roadside paradise...

This guy ran a scenic flight business, had a little store with a deck where you could just sit and take it all in... and here's a guy coming in for a landing...

Well, we were doing good on time and decided to try going up to Petersville to see if we couldn't get even a better view of Mt McKinley.  But the GPS was giving us some ridiculously long travel time.  After a while we found out it was because the road went to gravel, which we really didn't have time for so we turned around and headed back South to Anchorage.

Oh I forgot, as we got closer to Anchorage we took the Old Glenn Highway for a while, also very scenic...

Anyway, that's probably a good photo to end the show with.  We got back to our Hotel, went out for dinner at one of the other places we had read about, and called it a night.  Not sure what time we fell asleep, but we never did see a sunset the whole time we were in Alaska until the night we left... latest we stayed up one night was 9:30 (that would be like 12:30 am our time) and it was still light out.  So, that's only our first full day there, more to come.