North of Talkeetna the landscape changes. Very slowly, but you can tell that the trees are not as tall, the mountains look higher, there are fewer towns and people. You are approaching the Alaska range and with some luck you can see "the mountain", Denali. But as I said, you need luck. Most of the days it is hidden behind clouds.
It is a two hours drive to the nationalpark entrance and then another 30 minutes to Healy. I passed the Otto Lake Road turn off. For the first time in 8 years I didn't stay at Evalyn's little red house at Otto Lake. She moved to Montana over a year ago and I didn't expect it being that difficult for me being here in Healy without her... I miss her! Well, I had to drive a little bit further until I came to the Motel NordHaven. A very nice place, even with not very comfortable pillows. Healy welcomed me with a typical storm. Not just a high wind, no, a real Healy storm. It almost blew me away. Well, and if it was strong enough to almost blowing me away it definitely took care of all the little mosquitos. Therefore I was able to unload my car without having hundreds of them in my room.
Did I tell you already that I was travelling with some caribou antlers? No? Well, I travelled with some caribou antlers. Al gave the to me and they needed to go to Ann and Terry's place. Terry is making these wonderful Ulu knives and wanted these antlers for the handles.
I met Ann at their house. Terry was in Fairbanks and they didn't have very many guests that night. That was very nice for me since we had pizza and a lot of time to talk before I drove back to my motel room.
"Hello, excuse me. Anke?" Who's calling my name? It was the next day when I drove into the park and stopped at the Savage River turnaround area. I really needed a bathroom when I heard the above question. It was Russ, a filmmaker I first met maybe 6 years ago. I didn't expect him there and neither did he. And he immediately started telling me what happened during the last week or two. Things like an abondoned moose calve at the river, hunting lynx and three bears. bin. Well, we will see what I will see ;o)At the afternoon, after solving the problem of filling up gas without a credit card they accept, I drove back into the park. And here I met Vic, the moose biologist, talking to Russ. Both told me that I just missed the three bears (a sow and 2 older cubs) playing. Well, I was able to see them from the Savage overlook and watched them for some days. Nothing else exciting happened on that first day in the park. I saw two more moose, but no calves.
2 foxes, 2 bears, 1 wolf, moose, golden eagle. That's what I saw on my shuttle bus trip to the Eilson Visitor Center the next day. The whole trip took 8 hours and went 66 miles into the nationalpark. You can leave the bus whenever you want and go hiking until you want to stop another bus and take a ride again. But today that wasn't really an option for me. First of all I don't like hiking for a long time all by myself. I just don't feel comfortable doing that. Further more the weather was really nasty. Even with the rain stopped it was windy and the temperatures were in the mid 40s, really not nice. That changed and further east and later that day it was nice again. After the shuttle bus tour Ann and I went to the bookstore and had some ice cream together. It was a nice day and especially nice evening.
The other thing to do in the evening is going on a short hike along the Savage river. This is especially a good thing to do after having a very good Seafood Chowder for dinner, as it happened to me the next day. And so I decided I need some excersise and went on a fast 2.5 miles walk on that round trail. It is very nice there. The path goes along the river into a narrow valley, comes to a wooden bridge, crosses the river and goes back on the other side. Since I only wanted to go there for excercise all I brought was my little video camera and no photo equipment. Which was a mistake, because I met "him" at the bridge. "Him" was a very cute an tame marmot. Well, actually there were at least three of them, but this special on posed in the sun and on the rock for me. I took some video, but no photos. Sorry.That was my travel report for today. I also went on a short visit to Fairbanks and another shuttle bus trip to wonder lake, but that is another story for another day.
And by the way. Are you interested in how much it is to ship a car (lets say a VW Jetta) to Baltimore? Well, so am I! I looks like the cheapest way to do so costs 1200 british pounds. I jsut tried to book it and therefore scanned all available papers that we have for the car and sent it to the shipping company. Let's see what happens. We will ship Dave's car, the Mustang, via a company here in Brandon, but from their quotation they were more expensive than the one I found. Since we don't have to pay for shipping his car I don't care, but we have to pay the shipping of a second car and therefore I tried to find a cheaper way of doing it. Anyway, even being cheaper than the one in Brandon it is more expensive than flying Amber in a new kennel to Minneapolis ;o)
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