It was a fine morning when we met up with our guide, Freddie, at the day parking area at Byers Lake.Together with two English couples (Robert & Linda and Robin & Laura), one American couple from Detroit and a single guy from Chicago we made a fine-sized party of 10 (for keeping bear and moose at bay) for the hike up Coal Creek Trail.Unlike the National Park, Denali State Park has lots of rainfall and consequently has lush, green abundant undergrowth benea...

We set off from Talkeetna, up, up and away, through the clouds and towards Mount McKinley - or so we hoped! At the last minute yesterday we'd changed flight plans because K2 didn't have enough for the summit flight.Luckily a quick bit of research gave us another opportunity and we were booked in for an 11am flight - with the only company that does uses instruments to fly. Dave the pilot was a cheery chap and gave us instructions on safety, flights plans and use o...

This stage in our journey took us west and then north towards Denali. Once again we had great scenery and found Palmer, a small town where we had considered stopping off at if we had travelled the other way round our route, to be very pleasant. We did some shopping - what else? - and then headed north to Talkeetna.The road wound its way north through Wasilla which has its own 'fame'.This is the home town of Sarah Palin who is reported to have built a huge fence a...

It rained all through the night and we awoke to leaden skies - so we had a little bit of an unplanned lie-in.However, heading west we could see in the distance that the skies were much lighter. We'd planned to head off the highway northwards to Lake Louise but turned back about half way when we realised that there was greater benefit in pressing on to our destination for today - Grand View RV Park, Matanuska. On our way we had some wonderful views of yet again mo...

We awoke to another bright, sunny day with blue skies and light cloud scudding over the white topped jagged peaks surrounding Valdez.Wished we were staying longer but it was time to move on and head north up the Richardson Highway to our next destination after filling up with petrol (for driving) and propane (for cooking and heating).While we were filling up at the petrol station we hit upon a strange sight.A wee van - decked out as a colourful cafe - had pulled ...