Leaving Tonight for Taiwan

Well, today is the last day in Alaska. I will depart tonight for the LONG trip to Taiwan. This will be the last post until I reach there on Monday night.

After arriving in Talkeetna yesterday, we rested in the sunshine for a while. Then we went downtown. It's a quaint, small town which was supposedly the one they based the story for the TV program Northern Exposure on. There is one main street with small businesses. Just a block off it is the landing strip. There is a river with a beach. And there is train service. There are wonderful views of Mt. McKinley from here.

We heard a train coming and walked to the tracks. It was a long passenger train. The cruise lines operate lodges and train cars in Alaska, so over half the cars on the train belonged to Princess Cruise Line and another company. There was a young man there excited that we had come to watch. We called him the local train nerd. He asked, "Did you come to see the Hurricane?" We didn't even know what he meant. But that is a small local two-car train that serves the country area for people going to their summer houses. It also is used in several rafting trips where you go up the river on the train and raft back down. Anyway, we talked to him as the big train passed, then we returned in 30 minutes when the Hurricane came in for its final stop of the day.

We watched the characters in town, too. One of books we read called Alaskans "enlightened excentrics." There are some "different" people here. Most of the men have scraggly beards. Everyone is very casual.

We ate at an Asian place on main street. We had a combination plate with sesame chicken, lomein, fried rice and an egg roll.

In the evening, we watched a DVD in our room. Then we went to the hot tub about 10 p.m. It was a nice evening, but the mosquitoes started to come out. We haven't had any problems with weather or mosquitoes so far, but yesterday we began to notice the latter. It's good we are leaving. Some of our guidebooks call the mosquito the state bird of Alaska which is a sign that they are bad at times.