Talkeetna, AK to Cantwell, AK 7/31/14

Day 90 of our summer trip. 

We did not travel far today. For the past two days, we have had beautiful clear skies and fantastic views of Mt. McKinley.  It is said that only 30% of all visitors to Alaska get to see the mountain during their visit.  We feel very privileged to have had two great days.  Today is the more usual view of the mountain and similar to what we saw when we were in Alaska on our cruisetour with Princess Cruise Line several years ago.  We are sure that we are looking in the right direction, because we took these photos from the same general area that we took yesterday's clear view photos. 

Now, we have made many twists and turns and have made our way farther north.  We don't even know if we are looking in the right direction to see Mt. McKinley.  What we do know is that no matter which direction we look, there are low hanging clouds that obscure the views of any high mountains that are out there.

The fireweed is so beautiful and plentiful right now, so I just had to include it in today's post.  We took these photos right before we left our campsite in Talkeetna.  Notice the bee on the first photo.

 

 

We found a nice RV park, the Cantwell RV Park, in Cantwell, AK.  Cantwell is located about 25 - 30 miles south of the entrance to Denali National Park.  Here is where we will stay for the next two nights.  This is definitely a seasonal campground.  It has electricity and water at the site and a dump station.  Interestingly, the water is supplied to each site in PVC piping laid on the ground, so that it can be picked up at the end of the tourist season and there is no worry about frozen, broken pipes.  That is what is inside the orange pipes on the ground.  It works fine.

There are animals at the RV Park.  They are the most wild animals that we have seen for quite awhile - a moose, a bear, and a wolf.  The plants have sort of hidden the bear, but he was there.

After we got settled in our campsite, we went to get some milk.  We wanted fat free milk, but all we could find at the store was 2%, so we decided to get 1/2 gallon to last until we got to a bigger store.  It was different and cost $6.99/half gallon.  The expiration date was 9/18/14!!!  We thought maybe they had made a mistake at the dairy, but all of that brand had the same date.  We looked and looked to see what was different about this milk but we couldn't figure it out.  Since I am writing this post after the actual time that it happened then back dating it, I can tell you that we did finally figure out what the difference was.  We went into a supermarket and saw that the same brand of milk had a regular milk dated to expire in a couple weeks and an "ultra-pasteurized" version that cost much more.  Since the convenience store that we had gone to did not have any other options available when we were there, we didn't have much choice and couldn't compare.  You always learn something.  The milk tasted the same as usual and was gone well before the expiration date.