July 5, 2025 - Alaska
Talkeetna
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| The four of us plus Parker drove up to Talkeetna for the day. The parking lot is down by the Susitna River so we started there. There wasn't much too the walking trail since water blocked most of it. |
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Parker by the river.
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| The famous bush pilot Don Sheldon used to run his air services operation out of this building I guess. |
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| Now it is used for a local art museum. |
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| The Sheldon building is at the north end of this grass strip which is still operational. It is called Talkeetna Village Strip Airport, is private, and is 1600 feet long. |
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| Parker tries out her new "Noculars". |
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| We had a nice lunch at the Mountain High Pizza Pie. |
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Parker with her new friends.
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| Main street Talkeetna. |
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| More Main Street. |
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| Ice cream! |
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Parker enjoying some ice cream covered in sprinkles.
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| Brad about to dig into some Fireweed ice cream. |
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| Just a short distance out of town is the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge where we stopped to check out its fantastic overlook on the back deck. |
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| Somewhere out there is Mount Denali. Actually, you can see Denali's peak if you know where to look. |
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There is Denali, poking up through the clouds, just left of center.
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| A Talkeetna Air Taxi plane takes off, no doubt carrying sightseers, to go land on a Mount Denali glacier. It's not hard to see Denali's summit in this picture. |
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At the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge's overlook.
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Parker stands next to a massive Brown Bear.
This brown bear weighted 2,000 pounds and was 13 years old when it was killed.
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Amazingly, the big bear was brought down by a 9-year old girl named Fern Spaulding Rivers.
Fern was brown bear hunting on the Alaskan Peninsula with her father and mother on May 10th, 2006 (when she was 9 years old). She was carrying her Remington 700 Stainless chambered in .375 H&H and topped with a Zeiss Diavari Classic 1.5 - 4.5 x 18 scope. As the day progressed she and her father saw 11 bears. At one point, they were charged by a wolf, and they had to dispatch it at only 8 paces! Later, they spotted a big bruin in a gully at 32 yards. Fern rolled the bear with her first shot, but the bruin regained it's footing and tore off across the tundra. Shooting again from a prone position, Fern dropped the behemoth for good with a second 270 grain Barnes Triple-shock at 112 yards.
It took two full days to skin and pack the bear back to camp.
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| We stopped by a seaplane base on the drive back to Wasilla/Palmer. |
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