While roaming around Denali National Park, we hoped that we would not be one of the 30% of visitors who won’t see Denali. It turns out all we had to do was move on to the next destination, and viola! Her magnificent beauty appeared behind the clouds.
Denali showed its awesome beauty with just a few cloud cover. We were on the Parks highway when it revealed to us and we saw lots of it when we arrived in Talkeetna.
We arrived in Talkeetna, the town which Cicely was modeled after. Cicely is the the town in the tv series “Northern Exposure” and Janine Turner was my favorite actress on this series. Talkeetna is the mountain town of Mt Mckinley where all its climbers begin as a jumping off point.This little town is bustling with climbers and tourists alike wanting to climb Mt Mckinley or just do active stuff such as boat rides, hiking, fishing, biking or glacier landing. With our glacier landing out of the way we ventured around town and checked it out.
On our third day here the sun came out beautifully. Since the highlight of our stay here has been satisfied we followed the town’s biking trail. On this bike ride we met a very nice couple from North Carolina, Joe and Judy. We first met them during our long Arctic Circle tour. Then we encountered them again along the Alpine trail in Denali park, then we crossed paths again on the main street of Talkeetna. Then on this bright sunny morning as we were admiring Denali without any cloud cover, we heard someone calling Steve’s name. And there were the Grubbs’ again, Joe and Judy. We hung out for a while and exchanged stories about the awesome views that we have been experiencing.
We thought we had enough of the mountain views but when we got back to the viewpoint later in the afternoon, we saw another perspective of the mountain with the sun shining on it creating shadows. Obviously when you are here you can never get enough of Mt Mckinley or Denali when the clouds are not hiding it.
We stayed at Talkeetna RV Camper Park, a small but nice campground walking distance to town and near a train station. One interesting note is that they advertise as Full Service RV park yet there was no sewer on any site, just power and water. Our site was wide and we were able to park our CRV next to Betsy.
Lowes Travels 
On your way to Anchorage stop in at Wasilla. You can say hi to Sarah Palin…and you can Almost See Russia from there!
We craned our necks to see where Russia is. But as you guessed it the rain and clouds are in the way again! By the way the headlines on the Anchorage news >>>”Coldest July on Record”