Talkeetna - Colorful Characters

Had breakfast and hung out at camp. We decided to take the 14 mile spur road off the Parks Highway to a little community where the road dead ends. This is a unique mix of old-time, small town Alaska and a favorite tourist stop.

Talkeetna has a lot of colorful history. When Mary Carey arrived in Alaska in 1962 she found work as a schoolteacher. Here she met the famous bush pilot Don Shelton who was famous for flying climbers onto Mt. McKinley. While in Talkeetna Mary continued her photojournalist role for Fairbanks and Anchorage newspapers. She was the first woman to fly onto Mt. McKinley with Sheldon to take photos of climbers trying to scale the mountain. Later she built her own cabin with a view of Mt McKinley and ran the Fiddlehead Fern Farm, one of the few places like it in the United States. Here she wrote several books. Today Talkeetna is a key jumping off point for climbers who are making the trek up Mt. McKinley and is still full of colorful characters.

There is one main street and it has an eclectic mix of gift shops, outfitters housed in log cabins and wooden decks inviting you into cafes like the Wildflower. We parked and walked down Main St. past the micro brewery tasting sign and noticed many of the places had folk and jazz music in the evenings. Just about at the end of the street was a little wooden building with an outdoor patio, somehow it felt perfect so we entered the Mountain High Pizza Pie for lunch. Picking a table outside we could watch the street. The tables were round metal garden style and were painted bright colors. The metal chairs were mixed with blue, pink, yellow and green. We ordered pizza and had a blast people watching. We saw grandparents with grandkids, families on bicycles with babies in pull wagons, flower people from the 60’s, a great mix of tourists from all over the world, locals who looked like miners, and backpackers of all shapes and models!

Our waitress told us to follow the path at the end of the road to the Talkeetna River. It was a really nice day and the air was filled with floating white fuzz from the Willow trees. It really looked like it was snowing at times. We passed the Chocolate store which had a sign out front, “Please leave your guns, food, drink and strollers outside!” Yes many folks here carry good size weapons - this is bear country….

We caught a small peak at Denali across the river and then walked back down Main St. Nagley’s General Store has been in business since 1921 and it hasn’t changed much. It’s the key place for general merchandise for the locals and tourists. We parked ourselves on a wooden bench in front of the store, got an ice cream, and watched the other end of the street. We noticed an old - well used - Blue Bird bus across the street. We had seen this same bus parked in downtown Denali. It looked like it had a ton of miles on it and there were definitely people living in it. As we watched three young men proceeded to fill the bus with water from the old Fairview Inn. They were interesting and looked like they had been on the road a long time. One of the men walked by us and Ken asked how long they’d been out. Two months he responded. They were a band from New Orleans traveling the country. Later we saw a man on a four wheeler with his dog in a basket decked out in sun glasses and baseball cap -

Eventually we walked back to the Mountain High Pizza to quench our thirst. Watching people is tough work! We listened to a woman playing folk music and she did a nice job on Janis Joplin numbers.

Soon it was time to wander back to the car and head out of town. We stopped at a scenic overlook, and just as we started to leave a young moose walked down the sidewalk right past us. It was really cute with it’s really long legs.

Back at camp we went down to the water and watched the combat fishing. It’s about 10pm and the sun is still out. This is Summer Solstice and the sun won’t go down til midnight. The light gets dusky but there really isn’t a sunset like we know it. There is some pink in the sky then it proceeds to get brighter. I stayed up until midnight and watched the sky against the silhouetted trees. The light was like a cloudy day - it was really neat!

We had a great day today.

Pictures: Talkeetna Main St, Mountain High Pizza Pie, Chocolate Store, Talkeetna River and Denali, Nagley Store (look for Ken), Young Moose, Susitna Landing Fishing at 10pm