Spending a few days at the start of the Team Alaska trip in Anchorage afforded the chance to take a day trip out to Talkeetna. Don once again leapt to the fore and organised a hire car and performed the duties of chauffeur and tour guide.

Talkeetna is an Alaskan picture postcard frontier town about 180km from Anchorage by road. Pop culture has it that Talkeetna is the town that the 90’s tv show Northern Exposure modelled the show’s tv town ‘Cicely’ on. This may or may not be totally true and the show was definitely not filmed there (it was filmed in Canada). Regardless of the facts it is a very pretty little town full of atmosphere and Alaskan weather.

We wandered around Talkeetna looking into the various stores, enjoying the town atmosphere and even strolling in the drizzle that seemed to be perfectly appropriate given the frontier feel of the town. We also discovered a small photo gallery specialising in Aurora Borealis photography; the photographer using Talkeetna as a base for their quest. For lunch, we chowed down at the Denali BrewPub on burgers, fries, beers, etc.

Eagle River Nature Center

On the way to Talkeetna we drove past the Eagle River Nature Center, which is a State Park wildlife/wilderness area. This was our first opportunity to take a hike and experience the beauty of Alaska’s wild environment. We discovered, in Anchorage, that TeenyPeeny was not a fan of small planes and we also discovered here that he had a deep seated fear of being mauled to death by a bear. This is not normally a problem in Australia but bubbled pretty quickly to the surface when we were reading the noticed boards and noted that there had been recent bear activity in the immediate area.

Not daunted…the team bravely headed off on one of the loop walks for a spot of Alaskan nature. Needless to say, we witnessed the breathtaking beauty of mountains, streams, muskeg, forest and waterfalls. We were hoping to see moose, elk or caribou, even bear (in the distance, except for TeenyPeeny) but alas, the wildlife didn’t show for us on this occasion; not even a beaver.

The scenery more than made up for it though. There was a hollow tree that easily swallowed four of us, except TeenyPeeny who was on constant bear watch. We walked along part of the original Iditarod Trail, immortalised by the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. The group returned to the carpark and learned that a bear had indeed passed through the carpark only moments earlier according to some other visitors but again Team Alaska did not bear witness to said bear. Needless to say, TeenyPeeny was keen to get back in the car and get going again…