Back to the Talkeetna Airport

Arriving safe and sound on plane number 3. What a day, what a glorious day!

A few more of the flight

The Susitna Valley where three rivers come together. The beginning of our flight back to the airport.

Glaciers and mountains

One of the amazing glaciers in Denali National Park.
Glacier pools on one of the glaciers.
More of the mountains.
This is the only privately owned property in the park. You can rent this yurt out but you must fly in, bring all of your own EVERYTHING, and pack EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING out! There are NO bathroom facilities! LOL
The side of a glacier. Our pilot said this area of the glacier is over 300 feet high. You can see a river running under the left side of the glacier.

More photos of our flightseeing trip!

More of Denali from afar.
Here it is closer.
Here is base camp. The ones that are going to hike Denali (and there are 1200 signed up this year) will be flown into base camp to begin their hike. They then hike 16 miles to the bowl.
The bowl is on the left side of the picture and the mountain. From the bowl they begin their climb to the summit.
This is just a beautiful shot of some of the mountain passes we went through.

Flight seeing Mt. McKinley!!!

Well, what a day we had yesterday. Our plans were to arrive in Talkeetna, get Jack and Alexis on a flight seeing trip and Marea and I were going to try the high speed river boats. When we arrived, Jack proceeded to order us 4 seats on the plane! I was in shock. I have never been on a small plane before and I was so scared. The story evolves from there. We got on a little Cessna 185 with a young pilot named Eric. He was very nice and very cautious and I was still really scared! LOL We got our seats (a five seater airplane) and took off. I was still really scared but all seemed well and I started to enjoy the flight. We got close to the mountain when Eric noticed a noise in the engine that he didn't like and told us we would have to go back to the airport. Okay, that really scared me, but he assured us that there was nothing serious, just concerning and we were fine. Whew! We made it back and landed. Got to our new plane with an older pilot named Rick. Rick had flown in the Navy for 20 years and had been with K2 Aviation for 10 years, assured us we would be fine and something going wrong with the airplanes were very rare. We were soon laughing at this statement because our next plane wouldn't even start! He said in 10 years he didn't know of a family who had been moved off two different planes. I was beginning to question whether the Lord was trying to tell us to leave the airport and go to the riverboats! LOL We cautiously got on our third airplane and all seemed well again, until we had taxied a little bit near the runway and Rick announced that he had to get off the plane and screw on the oil cap that was sitting on the top of the plane! Jack and Marea continued to laugh, but the humor of the whole thing had left me by that time and I was ready to get OUT of the plane. I didn't and boy am I glad I didn't! Rick took us on one of the most amazing adventures I have ever been on! The pictures will explain most of it!
Getting ready to head up in the air on the FIRST airplane!
Our third aircraft was named Big Fart Sky Goober. Okay, no comment.
The shadow of our plane.

Our first and far away views of Denali (Mt. McKinley) with it being on the right side.