Wednesday in Talkeetna

Well it's about 7:30am and David's catching up on his sleep . . . and I'm wide awake so I figured I would get caught up on this blog from yesterday's events.

This is what it looks like outside right now, so I'm pretty sure we won't be doing our K2 flightseeing trip over Mt. Denali today. Boo on the weather!

Yesterday we arrived in Talkeetna around 1:00pm; enough time to fix lunch in the RV and get checked into our lodge before heading out for our 3:15 tour with Mahay's Riverboat Services. You may have seen them featured on "Extreme Alaska" on either the Travel Channel or Discovery this past spring. They do airboat tours of the rivers here and one is an extreme ride of whitewater rapids in Devil's Canyon in Denali State Park.

We did their more tame 3 1/2 hour Three Rivers Tours featuring the Talkeetna, Susitna and Chulitna Rivers. We also made a stop at their historical recreation of a fishing camp and trapper's cabin homestead. The tour was informative both on the life of the early settlers in this area as well as how these three glacial rivers differed.

Along the way we saw where beaver had taken out rows of trees, the thawing ice pack damaged the shoreline, bald eagles and several very shy black bears. (The mere sound of our jet boat had them scampering for cover!)

Our guides were Israel (boat captain) and Conner (wildlife naturalist). Both were very nice, informative and entertaining. We would recommend taking a trip with Mahay's if you're in Talkeetna or just passing through.

After our tour we got back to the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge where we are for just the one night. It has been a nice break from roughing it in the RV. We enjoyed dinner in the Forker Dining Room and having the luxury of TV and WiFi. A good long hot shower will be very much welcomed in about an hour!

With the weather looking miserable for at least the morning, we'll be calling an audible for the day. Initially we were going to do the flightseeing tour and then head down to Palmer for the State Fair. Not sure what we'll be doing yet but David and I will figure it out once we're both up and around.