Sadly although I was on the west side of the southbound plane, there were a lot of clouds and I did not get a peek at the peak--although I looked almost all the time. It only takes an hour, a trip of about 350 miles that would take a long day by car on the highway even in good weather. But if I do get back say in early fall next year there is a chance I may try it and make a stop in the Denali National Park. I did want my own photo of the Big One but that was not to be although I got a number of post cards etc. which of course were better views than I could expect out a plane window!
Again it was one of the Q400 prop planes. It is strange after many years of jet flying to travel in such a plane.It is actually less noisy I think than a jet and I was sitting even with the wing and not that far from the engine on both flights The propeller--which is huge--is spinning so fast it blurs and you can pretty much see through it with just a faint distortion. All in all a rather novel experience.
This time I got an economy car, and it was the costliest of the trip for the least time but it was too late to catch the bus from Anchorage to Wasilla and I was not going to ask my hostess to pick me up again and then return me on Sunday evening so I left the airport around 7:00 pm, still in sunshine, driving. a silver gray Chevy "Spark." It is kind of a mini-mini crossover, boxy, four door and a hatch back. Low and feels like you are riding in a boxed up skateboard LOL. But it got me up the highway back to Wasilla and back to the house on the lake. I was tired, no question.
The teens here are back in school. So nobody slept as late as they did the first time I was here. Later I went to the Wasilla PO and got some priority boxes (my hostesses very good idea) and packed up the books, prezzies and souvenirs and sent them on their way to Alamogordo. They will arrive a little bit ahead of me in all likelihood and I got money's worth out of one large flat rate box! It must have weighed twenty pounds! The other was not as heavy. Tomorrow my extra clothes and such start home, probably by UPS. I need to finish packing that and tape it up tonight.
It was drizzly much of the day and a few harder rains so I did not try to do anything else. I am not sure if the city library is open tomorrow or not. If it is I may drop in and see if they have any more recent Iditarod year books since the Fairbanks collection ended in the early 90s. Of course they are more focused toward the Yukon Quest which is "their" race.
So I may post again before I get home but also may not. If it is sunnier tomorrow I may go up to Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine, a tourist attraction in the mountains above Palmer, which I visited my last day here before but didn't go up in the mountains, much closer there. Or not. And I may try to nip out to Eagle River and Chugiak off the highway to the south on my way back to Anchorage on Sunday, again weather and when I actually get ready to go will determine. But of course I will do some wrap-ups and more pictures once I get home and download stuff to my familiar larger computers and return this lovely little machine back to Brenda, hopefully none the worse for its adventures with me! It will be a couple of months or more to get my finances back in shape but I will be shopping for one of my own, for sure. I really like it for travel!!
A few more random photos: puppies at Buser's kennel; a special sled at the Knik museum, the front entry and side of Mary Shield's home, Paige Drobney and one of her dogs, and Aliy's house which she had built herself (she was in construction as was her husband when they met) and owned before they got together and that they now share. The upper windows are their bedroom and look out over the dog lot.
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