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No witty title today, too tired! We luckily were able to get out of Gustavus by budgie jet ( thanks Chrissy C) and take a 14 minute flight to Juneau (yes, 14!). Most of the budgie unloaded, but we stayed aboard while they loaded up the remaining passengers due for Anchorage.

We arrived at Anchorage early (amazingly, we were quite concerned as the flight had been cancelled the previous 2 days due to dense fog!), and were collected by our hotel.

We had a wonderful, and entertaining dinner cooked by some Bulgarians, who thought us drunk as we laughed profusely at a visual joke (see previous note re budgie jet), and the bar an, Doug, an Alaskan with a great love for Aussies, a hatred for Germans, and an amusement for Kiwis ("sheepshaggers" - he obviously has been educated by Aussies in the past). Doug gave us some very useful tour info, and where to shop advice, which we will follow on our return to Anchorage in a few days time.

Today we headed to Denali National Park, passing by Mount McKinley (or Denali in indigenous parlance), the tallest peak in North America. Unfortunately , we are unable to share pics, as the Mount was entirely fog/cloud bound all 238 miles...we did get some other nice pics though, of fast river rapids and lesser peaks. And, we finally sighted Mrs Bullwinkle and Junior. No pics though,but I did find a rather cute Jack Rabbit!

Finally, we arrived at our lodgings in Denali. Our very helpful Albanian Hotel Receptionist told us if we were lucky, we would see the Northern Lights, which he photographed two days ago. At 3 am...

As we have to be up at 5 am to get to our 12 hour tour to Kantishna with a NPS Ranger, I do not think we'll be up at 3 am...damn...however, with the dense cloud cover, I doubt the lights would be out for us anyway...Read more