Departing Denali and back in Auke Bay, part deux...

 

That is the best look we got at Denali.   This is from the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, about 60 miles away. Talkeetna is south of Denali.  That is one very large mountain.  Denali's summit is listed at 20,310' high.  The base starts at about 2,000', so that makes for a lot of relief.   For those of you who know Karen, I should clear up one point - we did not scale Denali.

This post covers two days (yesterday and today).

The other photos are from the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge which is south of Denali; this one is from the north side.   This was the morning on our last day from the Denali Bluffs Hotel.

Back at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, Karen & I cooled our heels while everyone else got their Denali/Glacier overflight in (remember, Karen & I did this a few evenings ago).  This photo is from the south side of Denali.   These people keep photo bombing me!

The downside to any land trip is the necessity of riding in some conveyance, in this case Ford Transit van/bus thing.

For whatever reason, we kept ending up in the back of the bus.  If we got on first, we went to the back to make room for others.  If we got on last all the front seats were taken.  Go figure.

We stopped for a potty break and many of our fellow Austin Adventures tourists availed themselves of the ice-cream.  If you look behind the moose-head you can see some of their flavors (maybe 20 or so).   We did not have any ice-cream as we've been stuffed like a goose at a pate ranch.

A word on Austin Adventures.  The Guides, Josiah, Lea, and David were absolutely fantastic.   They setup and executed a great tour.   They humored us, entertained us, accommodated us, knew the area, were super willing to teach, and generally were very competent.  If you want to see and experience Denali without the tourist attraction aspect, I recommend them.

Two thumbs up!

Karen finally gets to see a moose.  Too bad it was shot, stuffed, mounted, and displayed in the Anchorage airport.  But hey, it was a moose at one point in time.

I don't recall going into any establishment up here and not seeing former animals mounted.  It is amazing to me that there is any wildlife left.

This isn't food (that is different), it's trophies fer crying out loud!  Can't people trophy hunt with a camera???

Ahh, back at Blue Redd at 2010 (10:10pm).   The almost overwhelming sense of relief, joy, belonging, and peace that I get every time I see Blue Redd just warms me through.

Oh yeah, and Karen too!   I'm sure I'll pay for that...

We had to move Blue Redd to a new slip as that is a marina requirement (must relocate the boat every 10 days).  So, we obliged.  

We require 50A 240V shore power.  This new slip is supposed to have that, but again, my onboard monitors were showing that only 1/2 the circuit had power.   

I always presume there is something wrong with my boat.  So, I whipped out Copilot to confirm how to test along with my trust multimeter.   Yup, one leg is showing 0.73 volts.   It should be 120V.

240V is two 120V circuits.  With one circuit dead, I'm only getting 1/2 the power.   My boat can't make use of that.   I let the harbormaster know and they sent down an electrician who confirmed my findings.  He wasn't able to fix it, so he called in a marine electrician who is supposed to come by tomorrow.  Fingers crossed!

With nothing else to do this afternoon, we went to the world's smallest Costco to reprovision   It is about 1/4 size of most of the smaller Costco's I've been in, but they had nearly everything I needed (and a whole lotta things I didn't need - 50gallon drum of mayonnaise.   Anyone?).  Typical Costco.

Back aboard Blue Redd, we fired up the generator and do more laundry!   Yea, we are really living on the edge here...

A quick tortellini Bolognese (leftover sauce from a few weeks ago) and a salad; dinner is done!

Good Night, My Friends.