Driving to Alaska Day 17: Talkeetna

Welcome to post 17 of 18 in our Driving to Alaska series. We hope you enjoy the stories from this unforgettable 4,000 mile road trip.

When the morning began, yet again, in a wet and gloomy fashion, I began to wonder just how often the sun actually reaches the ground in Alaska.  The weather here, that was becoming quite familiar, was nothing like the sunny skies of Colorado that I was used to.

We’d reached the second to last day of our trip and so we made our way to Talkeetna where we would spend our last night with Cade & Becca.  We arrived midday to their cozy cabin in the center of town.  They loaned us their bikes and we rode into downtown where we got the full Talkeetna experience.  As we rounded the corner on to the main road six tour buses with the Princess Cruise Line insignia were unloading passengers for an afternoon around town.  Apparently this happens every day in Talkeetna and is what fuels the local economy.  It’s a sleepy town by morning and night but when the buses arrive for the day the town becomes abuzz with tourists.  We laughed at our timing and reluctantly joined the herd.  After lunch we pressed pause on our tour of town and returned to Cade & Becca’s place to let the buzz simmer down.  When we went back around 4:00 in the afternoon it was a completely different environment.  Most of the cruisers had left and half the town’s shops, who I assume know the cruisers schedule well, had closed.  We sauntered around enjoying the character of the funky, little town, took a break from the rain at Denali Brewing Company, and eventually made our way back to the cabin.

The aroma filling the cabin was better than anything we’d come across at the many restaurants in town.  Becca was cooking up a feast.  A colleague of Cade’s joined us for dinner, a Kiwi who spends his summers flying in Alaska and winters flying in New Zealand.  Many of Cade’s pilot colleagues were neighbors as the company they worked for offered a variety of accommodation opportunities on a little plot of land a five minute walk from the airport.  I’m not sure what I enjoyed more, spending the evening in the company of people living such creative, unconventional lives, or the delectable meal that Becca had prepared.  I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our last night in Alaska.