Goodbye Gustavus…Hello Anchorage

The pass

As we flew over the pass

Mendenhall Glacier from the plane

De Plane, de plane

Goodbye Gustavus…Hello Anchorage

We bid a fond adieu to Deb the innkeeper and boarded Fjord Air’s 6-seater with our pilot (and Fjord owner) Chuck. The flight across to Juneau was great, and I got to sit in the co-pilot seat. The view was amazing. I took photos along the way, and am so glad I had the experience.

I was thinking of my transportation checklist. Tomorrow we take the train to Denali, and then we will lack only a few methods of transportation to complete our trip. We will most likely not get to ride a dogsled, Santa’s sleigh, a yak caravan, or a helicopter. Otherwise we have ridden on ferrys, boats, jets, airplanes, vans, cars, trucks, a trolley and soon the train.

Once we checked in, we decided to go up into downtown for dinner. Our hotel is next to the Ulu factory. Ulu’s are Native Alaskan tools, I use mine for chopping onions and garlic. Wisely, they have a trolley that runs to and from town every fifteen minutes. Marilyn and I are very much like seagulls, we walked over and asked if we could ride into town which was fine with our driver. After we dined, and she had her nails done (what a poodle thing to do), we decided to make our way back. We saw the Ulu trolley coming, and it was the same driver, Marilyn waved him down and he let us on, then he dropped us out in front of our hotel. What a delightful way to get to and from town.  http://www.ulu.com/

Tomorrow, Denali, I can’t wait. The weather has been phenomenal so far, and although rain is forecast, it was clearing as we came back to the hotel. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have decent weather.

But now I am headed off to bed. We have been thrown by the 19 hours of sunlight, and are pretty tired. Perhaps we will get a good night’s sleep before our day on the train.More tomorrow.