Como Park

What a fun day!

We noticed the fox as we were having breakfast. It appears the fox had just finished his own breakfast thanks to one of our neighbors' ducks and in the woodpile he flushed a rabbit . It was the rabbit's lucky day.



We picked up Hannah and Caleb and drove to Como Park. Here we are beginning our day.

Here's the butterfly house.

Paige and Caleb looking at the Pink Flamingos

The hosers!

Mini donuts

On the train ride

On the "mini" train

Riding the Giraffs

Sitting by Sparky

Sitting on the turtle. Hannah liked "doing her own thing".

Having our picnic lunch

Merry-go round

Paige on her horse and she doesn't know her picture is being taken.

Kyla on her horse

Caleb on his horse

Here's a series of pictures of Hannah as she decided she didn't want to sit on this horse. We don't think she liked the horse going up and down.

We all had a fun day. Paige and Kyla were great helpers. They are also staying at our house tonight.

Bob & Sue

Denali from 21000 feet!

Today's blog could also be titled, "A funny thing happened on the way to Denali". We tried calling a couple of the flightseeing groups last night and earlier this morning with no success. When we woke up this morning the sky was absolutely clear. We decided to leave the B&B and stop at the airport in Healy (we stayed about 5 miles away). We found the airport and stopped in to see if they had any open seats to see Denali. BTW, these flights are either pricey or very pricey. Well, the owner of the flight service flies in every day from about 3 hours away and he said today was the clearest he had seen Denali in his 25 years of flying. They were also offering $50 off each flight and finally, they had two open seats for the 11:00 a.m. flight so we signed up.

We took both cameras and the blog only has some of the 79 pictures we took. I'll try blog some of the video clips after we get home.

So here is some of our pictures from this flight:


This is the flight service we used.

Here is Bob waiting for the flight.

This is the plane we took; a Piper Navaho.

The guy on the left was our pilot, Trent. We had a nice conversation with him before the flight and he was nice enough to let me sit in the "right seat".

At the upper left of this picture you can see Mt. McKinley (Denali) at about 25 miles out.

What looks like a roadway in the upper left of the picture is actually a glacier.

Denali has a North and South Peak. This is the South Peak. We are at about 21,000 feet here and are wearing oxygen masks.

This is the North Peak. Climbing Denali from the north side is much harder than from the south side.

If you expand this picture you should be able to see six climbers as well as their base station at the bottom of the picture.

Another picture of the North Face.

I think this is the saddle between the North and South Face.

Just a nice picture of a river in the valley below. Rivers that are from glaciers are called "braided" since they contain many small intertwined streams.

There are not a lot of things a person can do in their life that you know you will never forget. This was one of them.

We are now back in Anchorage for the next two nights. We plan to wash and turn in the rental car tomorrow. The (Hawthorn) hotel has a shuttle so we won't need the car.

Again, Happy Birthday John.

Hope you are all doing well.

Bob & Sue

Denali Bus Tour

It was a long and fun day. Today we took a bus from the Visitor Center just inside Denali National Park 63 miles towards the interior of the park to Eleison Center. Along the way we saw a huge variety in elevation, vegetation, and animals. Here are some of the pictures we took. Many of the animals like the Doll Sheep and Caribou were high in the mountains and the pics we took with the camera didn't work well.

Here are some of today's pictures:


Here's a picture of a moose about 1/2 mile from our B&B on our way to the park this morning. We have seen lots of moose and no deer. A cow and calf moose ran right in front of our car yesterday.

We sat in the front seat of the bus. This picture and the following picture are of a Grizzly sow and her two cubs. Although we probably saw a dozen Grizzly bear today, these were by far the closest we came.

This is a second picture of the bears. They did not show any fear of us and in this case there were about five loaded busses with folks clicking away with their cameras.

Yep, these are the busses. The roads are narrow and mostly gravel and occasionally you can look down a few thousand feet!

Ok, when you look at this picture you might say, "Why did they put this picture in?". Well, if you look above the hill on the right and see a small crescent of white to the left, this is the top of Mt. Mckinley (Denali). This is what we saw today, just pieces. Denali is visible only about 30% of the time and usually around winter (March). We are considering a plane ride around Denali tomorrow.

Here's another shot where above these white capped mountains, you can see more of Denali in the background.

This is Eleison Visitor Center and the turn around point for our trip. We saw lots of Caribou and Dall Sheep, some Ptarmagan (like grouse), tons of beautiful flowers, rivers, pine trees, Golden Eagles, and hares.

Here's a Caribou we saw on the way back. They like to stay on the ice to keep away from the bugs.

That's it for today.

Hope you are all well.

Bob & Sue

To Denali, Denali, Sled Dogs

Hi everyone,

This morning we left Wasilla about 9:00 a.m. to drive north to Denali National Park. The trip is about 200 miles and took us about four hours.

Here are some pictures from today.



If you click to enlarge this picture, you should see Mt. McKinley (Denali). To get some idea how big the mountain is, we are over 100 miles away at this point. We hope we get a clear picture of the mountain tomorrow when we are less than 25 miles away.



This is a picture from the front of our B&B lodge, Denali Touch of Wilderness B&B Inn.



This is a lady , Lori Yanuchi, and her son, who have an interesting life bringing supplies to the north side of Denali for mountain climbers. These supplies are called caches that the climbers don't have to bring in themselves. About 1500 climbers a year try to climb the mountain.

Here is a book Sue bought which was written by Lori Yanuchi.

Tomorrow we will go on an 8 hour bus ride into the interior of the park. Hopefully we will have more pictures and stories to tell you then.

Bob & Sue

Wasilla, AK

Well, here we are in Wasilla, AK, home of Sarah Palin. Wasilla is a nice town with two lakes and mountains in the background. We're staying at the Best Western which is located on the shores of Lake Lucille. Many of the homeowners on this lake have float planes.

We didn't see Sarah at McDonalds, but maybe she eats later than we do.

Our trip from Homer to Wasilla today has been perfect. We saw a cow moose with her baby, and later, another adult moose. The weather has been perfect....about 65 and sunny. In the Cooper River Recreation Area we watched lots of people fishing....they were lined up on both shores and in the middle of the river at about every 5 feet. The same area was busy with rafters going through rapids. We also watched kite sailing?!?

We left Homer and the Bay Avenue Bed and Breakfast after a yummy breakfast this morning. We would recommend this B&B to anyone traveling to Homer. Laurie, the owner (originally from Sleepy Eye, MN) is great and has connections to the fishing industry. She had a full house while we were there, and did a great job of introducing all her guests and making them feel welcome.

We've been on the road a week. At times it's hard to believe it has only been a week since we've done so much in that short period. We also realize we only have a few more days before we head for home. Tomorrow we will head for Denali, about 200 miles north.

It has been nice to stay connected with phone, email, blogs, and internet. The Blackberry is so nice!

Bob & Sue

Cranes, Saltry, Gull Island, Time Bandit

Hello everyone. We have had a busy day. We'll show you the day with these pictures. The picture below is a Sand Hill Crane and its baby.

Here's the baby. These are in the yard of the B&B we are staying at.

This a picture of one of the many glaciers we noticed across the bay.

We took a boat across the bay to Halibut Cove. On the way they showed us Gull Island. It is absolutely covered with birds.

Here's a picture of an eagle attacking seagulls. We saw this several times while we went around the island. The eagle is a very good hunter even if the pickings are good.

Across the bay we stopped and ate at a small restaurant called The Saltry. It is where they used to salt herring.

Next to the Saltry, they had a very nice intertidal pool with the animals and vegetation found . . . all were live. Here's Sue with a starfish.

On the way back we learned that the captain of the Time Bandit, Captain Jonathan was going to be at their store on the Homer Spit. We stopped over and Sue got an autographed picture.

Here's Bob getting his shirt autographed. He seemed like a nice guy.

So, tomorrow we will check out and head towards Anchorage. It's about 250 miles but its on a two lane road with lots of RVs, boats, and construction so we will just take our time.

We hope you are all doing well.

Bob & Sue