Friday, June 19: Leaving Talkeetna to Fairbanks de

Good day everybody after not so great sleep. I got up with the alarm around 9:15 AM. Mary and I decided that we would eat at the conscious Café instead of eating at the Latitude 62 for breakfast so we drove up here instead of walking since we’re already packed and didn’t feel right totake out parking when we weren’t staying there anymore. So we went up and drove and parked at the pizza place and because there’s no other parking in the whole area you can’t really park here you pretty much have to walk because mostly you only park in place where is designated. Anyway we got the Sunrise sandwiches, which is basically a bagel sandwich. I had pesto and guac and Mary had one as well with tomato, pesto and spinach. Just when we finished eating, a whole bunch of people came in so it was really good that we came when we did. Period today is Friday so the weekend starting. I had mentioned before that memorial day weekend there was a line the whole time to get something to eat. Well that’s starting right now here as of 10:52 AM. The first group of pictures was all taken at the conscious café where we’ve enjoyed breakfast for 4️⃣ mornings in a row Yum Yum definitely good vibes and good food. anyhow, it’s now 11:38 AM. We just left the café and took care of mother nature now it’s time to pick up her car and drive 4 1/2 hours to Fairbanks. Wes is tracking me and noticed that we’ve been staying in the same spot for a few days and I updated him on our status. Good to know the friends care enough to keep an eye eye out on you. Anyhow, it is now four20 4:31 PM and we’re at a traffic jam about 40 miles outside of Fairbanks. Mary took a bunch of pictures that I’m gonna borrow from her that she took when we had mountainous terrain all around. Now it’s just rolling Hills and trees and we’re truly in the middle of nowhere. I barely have Internet coverage cause the pictures won’t download on this Blog and the other Blog isn’t really working. We stopped at a gas station that was six bucks a gallon then like 15 miles later I see gas for five dollars a gallon so we picked the wrong gas station, but who knew. Well, the stop was a really good stop because we got ice for our ice bag and got a couple glass of water and I got two Pepsi’s when I drank already and we’re heading for the homestretch to Fairbanks as soon as the police allow us to proceed. We end up waiting almost 40 minutes and once we got moving, we realize the extent of the road construction. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life a huge swap of dirt to the left and brand new highway being built on the right it was unbelievable. We had a drive-through a gravel road. This was about 40 miles outside Fairbanks. When we did arrive at Fairbanks, it’s the middle of nowhere and then the sprawl just shows up. You’re in the middle of nowhere next minute you’re in Fairbank.  I had to go to the bathroom like nobody’s business.  I took care of business an emergency, and then the man Davie showed us our hotel after we called him because he works and lives in there in the in the building. He has some some other gigs going on in the building. There’s like four or five apartments that are turned into lodging. So Mary and I got settled in and we found a diner nearby. Looks more like a family restaurant place and we had a chicken wings as a opener and then I had a Giro and she had a club salad with lots of meat, olives and cheese in it along with lettuce and peppers. It sounds 7:37 PM we’re gonna pay for the meal and head towards the baseball field. See what happens the reason we’re going to the baseball field. It’s the midnight baseball game. It’s a big deal here and there’s no tickets left, but we’re gonna see what happens. Well, we’re waiting in line and then we realized there’s a line for buying tickets and we have to wait for everyone else to come in to see if there’s tickets left. They’re 45 bucks each for general admission. As we were standing in the ticket line some women literally hand handed over Mary a ticket so she went and got a seat on the first base side and some dude wanted to sell his reserve seat ticket for 100 bucks and I declined because I wanna be in general mission. I’ll buy it for 75 but I just couldn’t do 100 cause that’s all my cash. It’s not 852. They’re gonna let us know around 915 or so if we can buy tickets straight up. 

Thursday, June 18: Touring Talkeetna

Good day everybody today is Thursday our last full day here in Takeetna Alaska. We slept into a bit close to 11 AM which felt really good after the exhilarating day flying over mountains and seeing Denali and landing on a glacier. That was a thrill of lifetime that’s for damn sure I couldn’t believe all the good pictures. Both of us were very prepared and had plenty of battery life so we wouldn’t run out of batteries or some other iPhone stuff. Any way we got up and went to our favorite breakfast spot consciousness café. We had our sunrise sandwiches. The bagels came from Costco, but they tasted really fresh like they made him made them themselves. Well, we were at the breakfast place. We saw a bunch of Mexican people wearing Mexican World Cup T-shirts. They were all from Guadalajara Mexico. They seem to be enjoying themselves very much and sat as much. We ended up hanging around for quite a while and saw some tour people leave and we split a second Sunrise sandwich together that was very tasty and I had my second. iced coffee After that, we went towards the river and saw where they were delivering the rocks that we saw rumbling by us on this big truck. They were restoring land and protecting land from the river, which was eating away at the landmass there’s a special name for it, but I for the life of me don’t remember. We then went to the vintage store with a very nice woman that we visited twice before I ended up finding a really cool shirt for Alice and we thought about buying another one which was Star Wars themed. That’s a very enjoyable place to go. The next stop that we went to was Negley‘s store. This place had all kinds of knickknacks. It felt like a frontier grocery store had a little bit of everything had a lot of Alaska memorabilia and authentic Alaska things like pelts and the story of how the store caught on fire in 1997. The firefighters had to put the fire out in 30 below zero temperatures yikes! When I ended up getting a diet Pepsi there and I enjoyed going in there again it’s such a funky place that you do not see outside of Alaskan in my opinion. The next stop was Talkeetna Historical Society. This place had an eight dollar tour because we were both over 62. We saved two dollars each. First time I got geezer prices. Anyway, the lady was very nice and welcoming, and we went and went to the tour, went to one building and they went and saw some artifacts and then we to the second building and they had a video of people climbing up Denali and what it took to climb Denali plus flags of parties who actually succeeded in climbing Denali. When we came out of there, the lady told us how did you feel that earthquake.? I said what earthquake? Anyhow, a 3.4 Richter scale size earthquake, which was about 5 miles away. And we didn’t feel it or hear it only because we were really preoccupied in the video was running on loop. Then I remembered Anchorage had a really bad earthquake in 64. Not sure how I remember that but there’s an earthquake museum in Anchorage. If we have any time we might check out. That was a fun but exhausting trip I mean time at the museum. We spent a lot of time in there. We got our moneys worth on that for sure. After that, both of us were either dehydrated hungry or both because the sun was pretty bright and it’s very dry here. There’s also a lot of dust on the road as well so I was feeling pretty dusty as Carter Anderson, you dusty bitches. Well, before we left to go back to Latitude 62, we saw an Alaska train, roaring through both of us got good pictures and video of that that was pretty cool Yep, we couldn’t wait to get back and rest for a bit and then get something. We decided we eat at the Latitude 62 restaurants since damn we’ve been staying here for three nights. We might as well try their food. Well, we did do that after taking a bit of a rest and charging our phones, etc. We went there in a special is absolutely scrumptious. We hadegg print rollatini with polenta. It was gourmet style food. The really nice fellow who served us knew that the chef was used to working at fine dining establishments. He also gave us some really good advice about various things such as getting birch syrup down at the beginning of this road that connects Talkeetna with the  We
outside world. The Talkeetna spur I believe it’s called. Anyhow, I want to say again how much of a pleasant time we had at the Latitude 62 restaurant. The man was really nice to us and the food was absolutely tasty. I was so hungry. I was tempted to add another chili to the meal, but I held off. You came back to the room and decided we would dust ourselves off with a nice powerful shower. The shower was pretty good. I mean that order came out nice and hard which was good. I watched the Phillies highlights and they weren’t really highlights since José Alvarado blew a save and we lost 6 to 4. to the Mets 6 to 4 yuck!  The Phillies can’t seem to be good teams to beat the Marlins two out of three but so far at home they lost the mats. Anyhow, enough of that bullshit, the food was really good and I bought a T-shirt and so did Mary. I had to get a T-shirt from this place cause Lord knows I’ve stayed here. We’re thinking of eating breakfast here. I just thought of something that even if the coffee is bad, I know where I can get good coffee. They don’t have to know about that of course you don’t tell other people about other people’s stuff. It’s kind of rude. I was raised better than I was not raised in a barn for God sake. Anyway, well I don’t know why I went on that tangent, but I guess I took up word space on my blog.