It was time for another road trip, and this time we decided to go to Talkeetna. Talkeetna is just off the Parks Hwy about 75 miles from Wasilla going towards Denali National Park.
Talkeetna is an old mining town, and some of the old buildings still remain making it a National Historic Site. It also became a stop for the Alaska Railroad which helped maintain a population of nearly 800 current souls who must all work to support tourism.
It is the starting point for all climbing attempts of Mt. McKinley. The National Park has a Visitors Center there where all climbers must attend a mandatory training for the climb. It takes about 2 weeks to complete the ascent. Climbers fly from Talkeetna to a base camp at about 7000' on McKinley where the climb begins.
The NP office had on its bulletin board that there has been a 75% success rate of achieving the summit of McKinley so far this year. The overall average success rate is at 50%, so this has been a good year for climbing. A lot of the success may be attributed to the weather which has been abnormally warm. Most will tell you that getting to the summit of McKinley is more difficult than other mountains, even Everest, because of the harsh weather conditions on McKinley which is only 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. At over 20,000', the mountain's northern location along with its height can cause temperatures of -40º on the upper slopes even in the summer.
The town of Talkeetna is very touristy. It offers things like zip lines, river fishing charters, and flightseeing tours of Mt. McKinley. As a result the main street area is busy with people walking, shopping, eating, or getting their favorite beverage.
We walked the small area of shops, cafes, and bars, and had stopped at a visitors center where Peggy overheard a person saying that the Wildflower restaurant was good to eat at as the chef there was Pres. George W. Bush's White House chef. So, if the food was good enough for a President to eat, it must be good enough for us. Peggy and I sat on the streetside deck and ate lunch. I must say that the salad, french fries and the halibut was exceptional!
After lunch we went into a couple more shops. I chuckled to myself because most shops had plenty of tie-dyed t-shirts for sale. Grant had told us that in the 60's the highway going between Anchorage and Fairbanks was only partly paved. The pavement stopped at the intersection going into Talkeetna. The story is that this caused most of the hippies in their VW buses to stop where the pavement ended. Whether or not this is an urban myth or not, I don't know. But I did avoid eating any "special" brownies and resisted the urge to buy tie-dyed shirts!
On the way back we took another side trip to Big Lake which is about 15 miles from Wasilla. Big Lake, like Wasilla, has experience a surge recently in population. We drove around the south side of the lake where there was a salmon migration viewing platform. But there were no salmon to be seen. The lake has a large marina full of pleasure boats so I'm sure the lake is busy on weekends and evenings.
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