Don’t Stop Believing!

11pm daylight is hard to get used to.  We were up late last night and were still asleep at 8:30 when the folks from the Denali Air Taxi called to tell me that my flight to Denali and glacier landing was cancelled due to weather.

Over delicious pancakes (when eggs were brought to the table, the waitress said, oh – sorry, I had the wrong single lady)  we did some quick, and not so quick research and decided to take a train to nowhere.  Literally – it went into the back country, would drop folks off for camping, hunting or fishing, and head back to town.   It was about 7 hours of gorgeous views and entertaining travel mates.  Steven and Jean from Wasilla brought some family who’d come up for a recent wedding.  They also brought champagne (and flutes) and cheese and crackers.  They were chatty and a little drunk and we loved them.  A dad with his three boys did not and he’d try to catch our eyes to roll his whenever possible.

We peered in vain hopes of seeing bears or moose by settled for swans and some other birds.  Our couple of stops had us riverside watching salmon swim upstream and at the “Sherman City Hall” where we met homesteaders (and bought their book, complete with recipes for baloney sandwiches).

While nature whizzed by, we talked about projects we wanted to finish and what the meaning of freedom really is.

Back in Talkeetna, we wandered our puddle ridden path to the Denali Brewery to get a delicious French Roast sandwich, local beer and some olympic viewing.  Our waitress Baldy, for her bald head one presumes, was a UMass Amherst grad who, like so many others we’d met, had come to Alaska for a summer job and never left.  And I could see why.  Talkeetna is a town of young athletes.  As Siobhan said, after two days there’s nothing left to do by drink, gossip and fornicate.  I love it here.

Walking back through the woods, the music that  rose from some unseen campsite could not have set a better tone!   Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’.   With that, I go to sleep hopefully that I will have my flight to Denali tomorrow!