Alaska Trip - The rest of it... (by Toby)

We seem to be getting further and further behind on this blog.  I blame an awesome summer full of events.  So to get things caught up a little.  Let us share with you the rest of the Alaska portion of our trip.

Monday June 30th, 2008

The next part of our trip was taking the tourist train from Anchorage to Talkeetna.  The train was a great way to go.  It slowly chugged along through the Alaskan wilderness.  The views were incredible and you could just sit back and relax.  It wasn't quite like the high speed European trains we were used to.  But the slow pace allowed us to see more.

We arrived in Talkeetna.  Which is a small little town in Alaska that is rumored to be the town that Sicily Alaska from the 90's television show Northern Exposure is based on.  We walked around the town and looked in the shops, went to an artisans market and watched a video about one of the famous pilots from the town.  A really popular thing to do is go on a "Flightseeing" tour.  Where they take you up in a small airplane around Mt. McKinley.  However it was a little out of out budget for this trip so we passed.  We ate a really good little bar that had some good food and Hefeweizen.  Ummm...German style beer.

After wining and dining we headed down to the river to see if we could catch a glimpse of Mt. McKinley.  Most of the time it is covered in cloud.  So we were lucky to get such good views.  It may look like the middle of the day.  But these pictures were taken around 9:00 PM.

Tuesday July 1st, 2008 & Wednesday July 2nd, 2008

The next morning it was back on the train for the next leg of the journey.  We were headed to Denali National Park.  We only had one day there and they way the connections worked out we couldn't take a long tour into the park.  If you take a long tour into the park you can see all types of wildlife.  But we still made the most of our time there.  We went and visited the sled dog kennels.  They had puppies there which were adorable.  In the winter, the park service uses these dogs to get around the park.  We then made our way on a short bus ride and went on little hike.  We also got another look at Mt. McKinley.

Well that pretty much covers Alaska.  We left Denali National Park and completed the last leg of the train journey up to Fairbanks.  We didn't really see much in Fairbanks.  We were just really there to catch a plane over the Whitehorse.