Alaska

On the way up to Anchorage we saw a couple of mountains that resembled those of the Black Cuillin on Skye. This is a photo of one of them taken on the way back. Those who have experience of Skye and who have had parts of their anatomy rubbed off by the rock will recognise the similar features here. If it’s not gabbro then it must be something very similar.As the weather conditions around Denali were better today than on our trip North we couldn’t help stopping to try and get a better view of it. We stopped several times and captured a few decent views although we only realised that we had missed perhaps the best location after we had passed it. There are not very many places to stop for lunch between Denali and Anchorage so we had a picnic lunch of left over pizza from last night’s dinner. Weather again was lovely. To see a panorama of Denali taken from this picnic spot click this link.Eating again. This is the hotel we are staying at near the airport. It is next to the world’s largest float plane airport. Nice watching them take off and land.Hector was a bit put out when he read this notice.

Better late than never. We forgot to put in our trip from Anchorage to Talkeetna.
The hotel dropped us off at the airport to pick up our car. As you can see Hector got involved as usual.We got him settled in the back seat and set off on our journey.Our drive up from Anchorage to Talkeetna was fairly uneventful which is mainly due to the fact that there was little wildlife to spot along the edge of the road and almost nowhere to stop for refreshments. We did stop at a little lake for a break. This is us just turning into The Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge entrance driveThis is Hector soaking up the rays whilst we had a spot of lunch on the balcony of the Lodge. Denali was hiding in the clouds at this time.Talkeetna Lodge.We went on a walk along some of the tracks around the Lodge. That was our first encounter with the Alaskan mosquito and we hadn’t applied the Skin so Soft! They got us.We encountered this Willow Ptarmigan which posed very nicely for us.We also saw this lovely American Robin collecting flies for its brood.