On the road again...Talkeetna

We had a nice time in Anchorage. It was great to spend some time with Raschad & Tracy, they really took care of us. It's time to move on so here we go.....

July 19   Anchorage to Talkeetna     110 miles   2 hr 15 min
This morning we left Anchorage and drove to Talkeetna. It's a sleepy old town with a lot of tourist. Kind of like Haleiwa. We're staying at the Talkeetna Camper Park. It's the only full service park here, $32 for water and electric. They're pretty busy, we took the last site for the night. This place is kind of small, very noisy, right next to the train tracks, and we're pretty crammed into this park. We went for a drive to town then went to look for the Talkeetna Alaska RV Park &Boat Launch (ADF&G). We should have camped here. It's dry camping for I think $20 but seems quiet.
Oh well...too late now.

Joe eating his ice cream in front of Nagley's Store

We took a walk to town in the early evening. There were a lot of people because there was a band playing in the park. I guess it was a big thing for Talkeetna because everybody was out...tourists, locals, bums, drunks, dogs....everybody.
I wanted to look in some shops in town but everything closed up at 6pm. We took a walk to the river, then had some ice cream and watched the people in the park for a while. The band finished around 8pm so we walked back to our camp site and had to listen to someone's dog bark for the next hour or so.

Talkeetna river

July 20     Talkeetna to Byers Lake     64 miles     1 hr 15 min

Main street,Talkeetna

We got up this morning and went into town to have breakfast at the Roadhouse. This is supposed to be the place to eat. We tried the sourdough pancake. Was ok...not that great.
One big pancake for $8.95, but it included juice and hot cocoa. Oh well...at least we can say we ate there.

 Today we drove up Parks Highway for a little over an hour. We're staying at Byers Lake Campground. It's a state campground, $10 per night for dry camping. It's a really nice campground but there's a lot of potholes to get to the campsite. We took a ride out to a scenic lookout and took some pictures of the mountains.

I thought I was looking at Denali (Mt. McKinley) but it turns out it wasn't. Then we went to the Alaska Veterans Memorial. It consists of an alcove and a semicircle of five 20-foot tall concrete panels, one for each branch of service.  From this site we could see the top of Denali. The clouds kept covering it up but we could see the top of it.

The top of Denali peeking thru the clouds