~Friday, August 26, 2022~
Day 803
Day 67 of Alaska Trip
We are so praying for good weather since Talkeetna is THE place to experience the ultimate flight adventure. Remembering back to our time in Wrangell St. Elias NP early on in our trip, at the time we were torn whether to wait for Talkeetna or to do a flight there (Wrangell St. Elias has the greatest concentration of glaciers in North America). We really felt like we were missing out on something special not doing the tour in Wrangell, but it will give us a reason to come back. But I think we’re really in for a treat here in Talkeetna, that is if the weather holds up. It appears we might be in for some luck with our Monday 2-hour tour. Never having flown on a small plane before (Jeff has a few times), I anticipate this to be the highlight of our trip. We cannot wait!! Evidently, Talkeetna has some of the best flightseeing in Alaska, and the company we chose, Talkeetna Air Taxi, is one of the best. What attracted us to this company, aside from their safety record, was that if the weather became unsuitable for flying, they would refund you 100%. Let’s hope a refund isn’t necessary. The other benefit to flying out of Talkeetna is that we’re only 52 miles from the summit of Denali, so most of the way, we’ll be flying over mountains, not flat land. That should be 1 long post with some amazing photos/videos (I’ll do my best). So stay tuned!
With the entire day being rainy, it was good to stay in, for the most part, and in a lovely setting to boot. The only outing today was a trip to the grocery store by Jeff. The drive to Cubby’s Marketplace was about 15 minutes which had a pretty decent selection for this part of Alaska. At least he was able to get all of his ingredients for both the homemade chili and fish tacos he wanted to make……2 dinners we plan on having this week. With all the fish we got from our neighbor friend Jordan in Homer, we thought halibut fish tacos would be in order. For tonight, it would be the yummy chili. But you can’t have chili without cornbread, right? Missing my favorite Trader Joe’s brand, we’ve had to find alternatives, i.e. Marie Calendar’s, Jiffy, etc. which don’t make our top 5 list. But there was one one other on the shelf that we’d never tried before……Fleishmann’s Simply Homemade Cornbread and let me tell you, these are the bomb! They rate up there with the Trader Joe’s brand as a close second……moist, flavorful and delicious! Get your box today!
Having a little break in the precipitation, we ventured out with Sadie for an hour-long walk on the backroads near our campground. But the dryness didn’t last long as the last 20 minutes, it rained, again 😩. Nice we have our handy dandy portable space heater and a good blow dryer for those occasions. On just our 2-mile stretch, we noticed in this part of Talkeetna, most everyone owns large parcels of forested land with many of the homes set way back on the property…..nothing fancy at all…pretty modest and plain. Of course being in a more country-like setting, some prefer to use their parcel as a junkyard (have never understood that and something we’ll be watching out for on our next home since we want rural). Why trash such a beautiful area?
Though Jeff hit the hay at his regular 10:00, it was a late night for me, getting 6 hours of stitching complete. I’m heading toward the finish line and can’t wait to show ya’ll the end result!