Talkeetna - the day after McKinley fllight

July 22- Talkeetna

This photo of the town is the morning after we flew. It started raining at 3:00 am and rained all day Sunday. So we were quite blessed to have such a beatiful day to fly on Saturday.

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Dear Friends and Family,

I am putting together an email list of folks who would like to receive an email whenever I upload a new post to my blog. That way you won't have to keep checking to see if I have anything new posted. (I know my posts are sporadic). If you would like to be placed on my email update list, send me an email and tell me you would like to be added to the list. (You should have my email address if you received an email from me telling you what my blog address is.) Then whenever I post something new, you will receive an email telling you to check the blog!!

July 21 - Flower Gardens

Saturday – July 21

After we left Hatcher Pass, we continued our drive along the Willow-Fishhook Road. About seven miles before we got to Willow, there were two Country Garden open houses. One is a private residence that is only open one weekend a year. The other is open more often during the summer, as the owners are artists and have other offerings besides just the flowers and the gardens. I will just have to let the pictures speak for themselves. Unfortunately, I cannot post ALL of the flower pictures that I took. I hope that we can send you pictures of our gardens next year (and hopefully they will look like these pictures!!!)

July 20 - Famers Market

On Friday I packed a lunch and picked Doug up at the office. We drove a mile to downtown Palmer. They have a Friday Fling each week. It is a market--not quite a Farmer's Market because they don't have any produce ripe yet. They have the Fling each Friday during the summer. Lots of craft and food vendors until the produce comes in season. They also had live music. We had a very enjoyable lunch. As we ate we listened to the band (they were very good), and watched the children dance to the music. As we arrived we met lots of moms, kids and baby strollers headed to the Market. We saw that they too had packed lunches and brought the kids down to enjoy a picnic and the music. We visited with some folks who took our picture and found they were from Missouri.

**Note not only the lovely day at the Market, but also the fabulous mountain backdrop. No matter which way you take a picture, the mountain view is always there!

July 10-20

July 10- 20

One of the projects that has kept us busy is helping a friend put up a play structure for her kids. The structure was like on large jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces were cut to size and had the holes drilled in them. Sometimes it took all three of us to read the directions and figure it out. It took several days, but we finally got it finished. Since it doesn't get dark, we were able to work kind of late some nights.We didn't have any trouble with the heat and humidity, but the mosquitoes got out of control a couple of nights when there was no breeze.

One of her sons requested that the deck face the mountains. So when the kids are playing on it, they have an awesome view of the Talkeetna mountains. We went out to eat and to Coldstone Creamery to celebrate completion of the project.


As we finished one night, this squirrel came to visit the bird feeder in one of the trees. He didn't seem to be concerned at all that we were standing right beside him.

July 21 - Hatcher Pass

July 21 – Hatcher Pass

The weather was sunny, 72* and no wind – a gorgeous day. We decided to take a drive to Hatcher Pass. We have already been there once since I arrived, but I can tell it is going to be one of my favorite places. Hatcher Pass is one of the most beautiful and scenic parts of the Mat-Su valley. It is just 15 miles from our house. You follow the Little Susitna River on the way up to the Pass. The water tumbles down from the mountain because of fresh glacier melt. There was hardly any traffic from either direction when we drove up the road. You could hear the cottonwoods in the breeze and the water falling over the rocks in the river. We stopped several times just to enjoy it.
We stopped at Deception Creek Campground. They have primitive camping at this site. They do have picnic tables and fire rings and you can camp right above the river. We stopped for a few minutes and were jealous of the campers, as we smelled the bacon and eggs on their camp stoves. Those of you who are campers will know what I mean.

The picture ibelow the beaver lodge picture is a shot of the valley that we took from the Pass. If you look at the bottom of the picture, the valley and our towns are at the bottom of the Pass.

We continued up the Pass and turned west on the road that follows Willow Creek. This road follows the route of the wagon trail that was built to service the goldmines along the creek. It is not maintained in the wintertime. Those two statements should give you an idea about what sort of a road it is. You need to drive slowly on it, which is very good. Otherwise you would not be able to enjoy and appreciate the phenomenal scenery (remember-I am trying NOT to overuse the word “awesome”).
We saw some old abandoned mines on the hillside. We also saw an active, working mine. A helicopter would swoop down to the mine at the bottom of the hill, hover for a few minutes, then lift back to the top of the hill. It had a rope or ladder-like thing hanging form the bottom of the helicopter. It would then hover at the top of the hill and then come back to the mine at the bottom with a large box attached to the rope. We didn’t know if they were actually hauling ore to be processed at the mine or what they were doing.

We stopped at Summit Lake and the nearby “Nixon’s Nose” (that is where we had our picture taken). We met a man from Canada who was there with his daughter. She was waiting for the wind to shift so she could paraglide off of “The Nose”. It is a popular paragliding spot. But the wind has to be just right, because they are no roads for your people to pick you up if you head off in the wrong direction.

As we descended the summit we saw people whom we thought must be panning for gold in the creek. We also saw lots of beaver lodges and dams (no beaver, though). The trees are so straight and they grow like weeds. In a month, there will apparently be zillions of blueberries growing here. We didn’t know which ones were the blueberry bushes yet. Lots of folks go there to pick fresh berries. We saw no wildlife here (except a few chipmunks). But the bears know when the salmon are gone and the blueberries are ripe. They will move back to the Pass when it is blueberry time. There is talk of developing this area and making it a ski resort. As Doug and I looked across the area, we both thought what a shame that would be. You could not see ONE tower or power line, etc. It is so pristine. And we only have to drive 15 minutes to get there!

July 20 - Alaska Homeowners!

CELEBRATION!!

We found a house! Our offer for the house was accepted on Friday. We will be able to move in during the last of August. Our house sits on a hill in an established neighborhood. You can see mountains on three sides of the house. (the Chugach Range to the southeast and the Talkeetna Mountains on the other sides). The front of the house faces Cook Inlet. On a good day, you can see the Inlet and the city of Anchorage (about 40 miles away). We have about 1 1/3 acres of land. The yard is already very nicely landscaped. The rest of the land has trees and wooded area in which we plan to make some hiking trails. The back of the lot drops steeply down the hill, so we figure we will have our own “gym” in the backyard. We can get plenty of cardio-exercise hiking up and down the hill, not to mention developing those buns and calf muscles!!! It has a garage that is big enough to get both of our vehicles out of the winter weather. It also has a third garage, which will be nice for storage (no basements here in Alaska). It sits at the end of a cul-de-sac so we will have nearby neighbors but not a lot of traffic. Because the neighborhood is already developed, we will not have a chance of anyone building anything that will block our views. It should be even more awesome in the winter when the leaves on the trees are gone. The realtor did tell us that, since we sit on a hill, we would get wind. We responded that we knew how to live with wind---we are from Nebraska!