Road Trip

So there is a lot that I have not mentioned about my last weeks in Juneau and I will update you when I get the chance. But right now I am in Anchorage. My friend from college, Liz Mullen, came to visit me in Juneau. She stayed for 5 days with me and got to do some amazing stuff. The list includes: whale watching, flightseeing, white water rafting, kayaking, BBQs etc. We had a lot of fun and she got to meet my man Dan. But at the end of the week, it was the end of the season and time to move on. So come monday october 1, we hopped on a ferry from juneau to Haines and then rode with my friend Spencer all the way to Palmer which is about 40 miles north of anchorage. It was definitely an interesting road trip. He had his brother's cargo van and stole the back seat from a mini-van to put in the back of the van for the thrid person to sit. Also in the back of the van was his motorcycle and all of the stuff he brought to juneau for the 5 month summer. Liz and I took turns sitting in the back but the drive was amazing and worth it to get a free ride to the interior of alaska. There were snow covered mountains just about the entire dive up. It was gorgeous.
After 13 hours of driving we arrived in Palmer and slept on Spencer's parents couch. We woke up to his mom sending out his younger siblings to the school bus and promptly woke up when we figured out that he had not told her he had friends coming with him. We felt a little awkward so we got up, walked around his property, and headed out. His property was incredible. Behind his house there is a creek with salmon running so we watched them for a while, which was an experience. Then we left to get to anchorage to rent a car and drive up towards Denali National Park. Now the interesting thing about Alaska is that it seems as if this state is only open from May 1 to Sept 30 because thats when there is an influx of tourists. So needless to say, a road trip beginning oct 1 wasnt during the high season and pretty much everything here is closed down for the winter. So we stopped before Denali in a town called Talkeetna and stayed the night. It was a cute little tourist town with some quiant little lodges. The next day we drove up farther north to see more of the interior and stopped at a place called Byers lake. There was a 4.8 mile hike around the lake that Liz and I walked but we back tracked a bit so it ended up being more like 6 miles. All along the trail there were moose and bear tracks which was kind of freaky seeing as how us two girls were the only ones on the trail so if anything happened to us then no one would know. On the far side of the lake there were some great views of the Alaskan mountain range and Mount McKinley.
Once the hike was over, we rushed back to Talkeetna to take a flight up to see the Alaskan range and Mt McKinley from the air. The plane ride was beautiful and relatively smooth and in the middle, the pilot landed the plane on a glacier. The way he could do that was because the plane was on skis. It was really amazing because once we landed, we all got out into the snow and played around. It was only 15 degrees outside at the time. After about a 1/2 and 10 frozen tourists, we hopped back into the plane to fly back to Talkeetna. Once back, we zoomed on back to Anchorage to meet up with a friend who was flying back in after working up at the North Slope for a week. I am in his apartment now after a day of running and relazing before the travelling picks up again tomorrow when Liz and I fly out to Seattle.