TravellingStrom

Friday – Talkeetna, Alaska

The rain was still around in the morning and it was cool, but we decided to move on anyway as we could ride through it. So, we packed up and headed south, today’s destination was Talkeetna. There was another BMW in the car park, along with Vincent’s Transalp, he had ridden out yesterday but the fog closed him in so he came back to wait for another day.

We headed off with the rain just a misty cold nuisance rather than actual rain, but we were rugged up anyway, heated gear and all. Not long down the road I turned around as I had seen a funny thing up on the hill, it was a lounge suite with all these toys on it, some had slid down the hill, I am not sure if it is a shrine for a dead kiddie or not as there was no cross, but it looked weird out in the middle of nowhere!

This is Simon the wasp 🙂 Mind you I looked no better in the bright orange oil suit that Matt gave me 🙂

After a small stop a bit further on to shed some gear, we were now into dry overcast conditions and we were hot, we stopped at Healy to get some fuel, then Denali itself for some Subway lunch.

Not long after lunch we spotted a group of riders at a scenic viewpoint and as we had seen nothing but the insides of clouds and smoke haze for a fair while we pulled over for a chat. They are a group called Geriatric Road Riders and were riding north from Oregon

The chat finished we continued south where the mountain ranges started to make themselves prominent, the views were becoming more grander, it was great to have views actually 🙂

We spotted this massive igloo, it used to be a servo, motel etc but looked to have been closed down for a while.

Just after this we crossed a massive gorge, then onto the visitors centre where we found that the view of Mt McKinley was severely restricted due to the low cloud. Apparently it can only be seen for 25% of the time, it is the highest mountain in North America at a tad over 20,000 ft, but you cannot ride to it nor up it 😦 It is a 3 hour bus journey there and 3 back, with maybe nothing to see. You can fly a plane in and land on the glacier, at the usual rates, but to me, if I cannot ride up it, it is just a big piece of vertical dirt! This is what we saw, nothing! I have drawn a sort of outline of what should be there and stole borrowed a picture from here

Just down the road was the turn off to Talkeetna, here we gathered some info regarding salmon and accommodation and fun in that town. The ladies there were different, but we eventually got away with the info we sought. So we now headed north and along the way, I was leading, I spotted a big black bear just coming out of the trees to my left. I pointed him out with my arm to Simon, the bear turned around so I kept on going. Simon had stopped and turned around and managed to take these photos as the bear once again tried to cross the road, to get to the other side I guess 🙂

We arrived at the village of Talkeetna, which seemed a very quaint old town and reminded me of Nimbin back home in Queensland, including the hairy arm pitted sheila’s and the hippie type clothes. It was Friday night, so after a look at a few places we picked a dorm type room at a place called the 7 Trees. Although, it should be called 6 Trees and a stump growing out of a Bears Bum 🙂

We found that we were very close to a number of pubs, which was great, it saved riding anywhere, so we had a beer or two at a few of them. There was an airport right in town with the windsock on the pubs roof!!

One of the pubs was owned by a Kiwi, but they had an Aussie flag on the ceiling, she had been here 30 years and still had an accent. 🙂

Just across the way is the Fairview Inn, which is also called the Dimview Out by the locals 🙂 So, we had a beer here, where I saw a small lure hanging from the ceiling. It had a bent hook on the front treble, but there were no teeth marks on it, so it may be a bluff, besides the rivers are not deep enough for this one 🙂

We met up with Alexie, a nice girl and had a beer with her, before heading back for a feed at the Kiwis place, they had cheap tucker 🙂

Right next to our hostel was a micro brewing company, so we sampled a beer there before wandering up the road to another bar built in an A-frame style called the Tee Pee Oasis 🙂

Here we bumped into Alexie again and had some fun, it was a nice place to hang out for a while and it turned into a late night for me, although Simon bailed out at midnight or thereabouts 🙂

Day 274 miles and 441 km
Trip – 29,508 miles and 47,489 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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