Today is my birthday … Happy Birthday to me. While having my breakfast, I got to open my presents from Karen. One of my gifts was a flightseeing tour which also included landing on a glacier. Now I was excited. The tour leaves from Talkeetna which is about two and a half hours away from Anchorage. We quickly got moving and were out the door around 9:30am.
Talkeetna is north of Anchorage and the first thing that I noticed during the drive is that the scenery is different than when you drive south … much more greenery. Once again we lucked out with having a beautiful warm sunny day. We did not make too many stops for pictures on our way up since we wanted to get into Talkeetna and do some exploring of the town before our flight.
I think I read somewhere that Talkeetna was the inspiration for the TV show “Northern Exposure” … interesting characters and funky shops and restaurants. Talkeetna’s mayor is an eighteen year old cat called Stubbs who lives in the general store. The town is not that big so it did not take us long to check out the various shops before grabbing lunch from the Salted Pickle.
We made our way to Talkeetna Air Taxi for our 1:30pm Base Camp Tour. After getting checked in, we headed outside to meet up with our pilot Mike along with the three other people that would be on the flight with us. As we headed over to the plane, Mike asked for a volunteer to sit up front with him. Karen mentioned it was my birthday and so I was lucky enough to get the seat.
All I can say about this flight was that it was magical. The flight to the glacier is about 45 minutes and you get to see so much. We saw Base Camp which is where hikers are dropped off to begin their climb, flew by Mount Foraker, Mount Hunter and the southwest side of Mount McKinley. During the flight, Mike was great at pointing out the mountains and glaciers and he made sure that when he flew by/over things, he always made a pass to the left and the right so that everyone on the plane could see.
I would have been content with just the flight. But the tour also included landing on a glacier. As we approached the landing area, the planes that were already there seemed so small in comparision to the vastness of the moutains. The landing was so smooth you did not even realize that we were on the ground. We got out and the first thing that we did was just stand there to soak in the scenery. The temperature was 38°F but it felt warmer because of the sun. I could not believe that here we were standing in the middle of the mountains in Denali National Park. We only had about fifteen minutes so we made the best of our time by taking lots of pictures and just standing in awe. After getting back onto the plane, it was a quick flight back to Talkeetna.
There were a couple of stores that we did not get to see before our flight so we went back into town. Karen overhead someone in one of the stores talking about a fire that was down the Parks Highway, the highway that we came up on. We thought we should have dinner first before heading back to Anchorage.
We started our trip back to Anchorage and about one hour in, the traffic was stopped and there were big black clouds of smoke. We parked the car and walked up the highway to see if we could see anything. We came upon a man who had a walkie talkie so we asked him what was going on. He told us that the highway as closed two miles up because of the fire. At that point, he said that they will probably be opening the highway later in the evening. By this time it was 6:30pm. We went back to the car to wait it out for a bit and also started looking at the map. We noticed that there was another way to Anchorage but it was a long way around. The map also indicated that one section of the trip would be on unpaved road.
About an hour later, I went back to ask the man about that unpaved road and an Alaskan State Trooper showed up to give more information. The trooper said that it now looked like the highway would be closed possibly all night and that the unpaved road was probably not a good idea to take. He also said that another section of the trip would be in an area that is heavily populated with moose. I took this information back to Karen and we decided that instead of waiting on the highway, that we would go back to a gas station near Talkeetna and wait there. At least there would be food and bathrooms to use. We went back to the gas station and got ourselves comfortable.
Around 10:00pm, I noticed a volunteer fire fighter driving through the parking so I stopped him to see if he had any more information. He told me that the highway was now going to be closed all night with no ETA as to when it would be opened, that the fire was on both sides of the highway and that it had consumed 2000 acres. When we first hear about the fire, it had consumed 88 acres. Now we had a decision to make … wait it out or take the long way around. The long way around meant driving up to Fairbanks and then back down another highway to Anchorage. In total, this trip is twelve hours long. We decided to drive since we could control this. We knew we couldn’t make the entire trip tonight so we decided to just get to Fairbanks and find a hotel room. Using the GPS, I called ahead to the Hampton Inn ($217 USD) and got us a room.
The drive to Fairbanks was long (five hours) and exhausting. Since we are close to the summer solistice, it never really gets completely dark. It’s more like twilight from around 11:30pm until about 4:30am. We did however see two grizzly bears and a moose. We pulled into the hotel around 3:30am and promptly crashed.
Karen … thanks for making this the best birthday ever.
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