Today our travels took us thru Lizard Head Pass on the San Juan Skyway, across the 4 corners states of Colorado, New Mexico (for about 6 seconds) Arizona and Utah! We passed thru Monument Valley and then down across Arizona thru Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona. Here is a taste of our scenery! First, our SW journey out of Colorado

We passed just briefly thru the corner of New Mexico, into the Navajo Nation, where the corners of 4 states converge, we drove in all 4 today! Colorado, NM, Arizona and Utah! We took a little divergence to pass thru Monument Valley. See if you can catch Forrest Gump on the road!

We traveled across the state of AZ, down thru Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona for a 2 night rest.

Our fabulous Alaska Adventure is over.   We are back in the lower 48, after a couple full days of travel,  6-7 hour drive down the state of Alaska on Hwy 3, Fairbanks to Anchorage.  

We stayed at a great hotel close to ANC , the Lakefront. The lobby was filled with Alaskan animals! 

It was set on Lake Hood where the flight planes take off and land

Thursday was a full day of flights,  Anchorage to Seattle,  then Seattle to Denver. 

We arrived late in the evening, so we stayed the night near the airport.  My daughter,  Liz, drove down to pick us up and drive us today to Nebraska.  

But… after a couple days relaxing with the family,  we will be back on the road.   Stay tuned.

Our outings for the day! While The guys went Arctic Grayling fishing. I visited a couple spots near town.

There is a viewing place near Fairbanks where you can see a section of the Alaska pipeline!

There is also a migratory bird viewing area! Few birds there at the moment, and at the far side of the field. When I went, it was misting a bit too so sorry for the quality of the pictures. There are ducks, Canada geese and a few Sandhill Cranes!

Our drive up to Fairbanks was rainy, so no good pictures. We walked a bit around the hotel downtown, but that’s it. In fact, the rain has raised the level of the river, so the guys have had a change of plans…. they are going on a wading fishing trip to the delta where the water isn’t flowing over flood stage! Hope their foot warmers work! Water is 38 degrees! But the fishing should be better!

Our bus trip today was full of impressive animal sightings…. everything but a bear! Sadly. The Caribou were out in force, and we saw 4 or 5 Moose. We saw Ptarmigan, the state bird, and even ewe, lamb, and ram Dall sleep and a red fox! Our only disappointment was no bear.

We arrived at Denali National Park today! We had a great greeting near the visitors center! You can drive a small portion, in 15 miles on our own, the farthest private vehicles can go, today into the park . Tomorrow we have booked the early Tundra Wilderness bus tour, but we had some time on our own today to visit the Savage River Station, and look out for animals!

There are few highways anywhere in the world more beautiful than the road between Anchorage and Fairbanks today! The stretch between Talkeetna and Denali National Park in particular! Today the skies were clear and the peaks of Denali were both visible and gorgeous!

We decided on pizza with Walker at the local pizza joint in Talkeetna and were listening to a great musician live in their patio when he walked in with a couple crew. Walker recognized him immediately! Marty Raney from the Discovery Channel Show Homestead Rescue! We heard him say they were filming nearby, at a couple homesteads. After a while, I ran into 1 of the crew on my way back from the restroom and told him Walker was a great fan! … and asked if we might chat at the musicians break with Marty and he said positively! But the musician was so great, he knew Raney, they had worked on some albums together, and he just kept playing!

https://www.honkytonkrebel.com/download-music

Eventually, Marty had to leave. (He lives an hour and a half away, he said,) but his crew member sent him our way to meet Walker. We chatted for about 10 minutes I think, took some pictures, and I even told him about our friend Henry, loving his show, building his own place in Fiddletown back a few years, and he said he loved the Big Island and had done a couple homesteads there!

We told him we had flown up to the Alaska Range to see Denali in the morning and he told us he was a guide up there for several years! He has lived in Alaska 50 years. He also told us about his album ‘strummit at the Summit’…. playing his guitar on the summit of Denali! Quite a guy! Very nice! Warm, easy to chat with, friendly! It topped off Walkers trip to Alaska! Better than the fishing could, I think!

We did a little more research on the musician and Marty Raney, and here are a couple of links for you.

https://youtu.be/XRyMmhfXgzs
https://youtu.be/1zUFzt9f0no


Here is Walker grinning ear to ear!
Great day in Alaska!

We attempted Denali today! …. no, not to climb it, just fly around it. Weather was OK and the views were great at first but a front started moving in and it was going to make the return too Cloudy, so our trip was cut a bit short and we couldn’t land on the glacier as we had hoped. The top of Denali’s 20,000 foot peak was occluded down to about the 14,000 foot elevation, but we were able to see parts of the mountain, plus Mt Hunter. We were able to see several glaciers, including the longest 1 in N.America, 45 miles long and 2 miles wide.

Along the trip from the ship we passed thru a2 mile, 1 way tunnel., (obviously too dark to photograph) . We stopped at the Wildlife Conservation center and saw animals native to Alaska. We drove along Turnagain Arm, an inlet named by Capt. Cook, and we stopped at a great Moose and water fowl habitat called Potter Marsh.

At Potter Marsh. There were Arctic Terns, several duck species, and an eagle