Not a Lot Happening

The weather has been hot here. Temps in the high 80's and low 90's. So far no days with a heat index of over 100 but I think we did have one with a head index of 94. It's 5PM here and the actual temp is 91. No more 90+ days in the 10 day forecast so that will be nice.

Kathy watched Nolan a couple of days last week and both Mon & Tue this week. Lydia gets off the bus at the top of our driveway at 4:30PM. Hadly, the neighbor girl who is in Lydia's class and who lives in one of the houses where our driveway intersects the road, came down here for an hour or so last night. Lydia is up playing at Hadly's this evening. Andy normally picks her/them up 5:30-6:00. Tonight she is staying until 8:00PM.

Nolan in Kathy's chair "reading"

We had lightening strike close to the house Saturday night. It fired the power supply on our modem and damaged the modem. I had a good power supply left from the last modem that went bad. I get it back up and running but the speeds were HORRIBLE, as low as 0.3Mbps. I finally contacted CenturyLink yesterday and they had a guy out here this morning. He replaced the modem and now we are up to over 7 Mbps. (just checked & got 7.26 down & 0.77 up)

Friday I helped Larry Farley build some more concrete forms for about 1.5 hours in the AM and right after lunch I went back over for another hour but the foundation wall was almost finished. Monday I went back and worked a couple of hours stripping some of the forms. 2 hours in this heat is all this fat old guy can handle 😀. Yesterday I helped a couple, Billy & Maggie, move. Billy is a firefighter and he had lots of guys (big strong guys) helping him. I went over with my truck and trailer, 1 of 5 trucks and trailers, and helped but didn't need to lift anything heavy.

Sunday I went to Freshwater Church in Jefferson City again. I have a meeting with the Pastor set up for next Wed. I've got some questions to ask before I change my membership. Of the 5 churches I have tried it is the closest to one that I think I might want to attend. I would strongly prefer a non-denominational, house church, but I can't find one in this area. Freshwater is a Baptist church and I'm concerned that it is to top heavy. I want to attend a place where the donations go to missions, not maintenance of the facility & management.

This morning was our Men's Fellowship & Bible Study. Only had 4 guys today but we had a good time. Gary, one of the four, was just back from a several week long trip out west. Sounded like he and his wife had a great time. I probably should have mowed the lawn this afternoon but I put it off until tomorrow.

Time to go. Lydia just arrived from Hadley's and Kathy will be heading to a 6PM Bible study.

God is good, may He bless you and yours

Back in Missouri

The overnight sail from Ketchikan to Vancouver was uneventful. Sunday's trip from Vancouver to Kansas City made for a long, boring day.
We had to put our bags out, the bags we did not want to carry with us on the airplane, before we went to bed Saturday night. They were picked up and taken to the airport. We picked them up at the Vancouver airport Sunday morning.
We had breakfast about 6:15 AM, while still on board, made a final stop back in our room to pick up our carry-on luggage and then met in one of the large rooms on the ship about 7:10. We received vouchers for the bus ride to the airport and were moved out onto the pier in bus load size groups. I think there were 6 busloads of us going to the airport that morning. The bus ride to the airport took about an hour. By the time we collected our luggage that had been delivered to the airport it was nearly 10AM. Our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 2:10PM and we found out we could not check-in for the flight until 11:10AM, so we sat in the main terminal area for an hour.
While on the bus ride to the airport the bus driver talked non-stop. A couple of points he made were interesting. In the 1980's the population of Vancouver was around 150,000, today it is over 600,000. We saw MANY condos being constructed. The driver told us that every one of the high rise condo units was sold before construction was even started. In some places, not the condos we saw under construction, people are buying 125 square foot units to live in, a 10'x12' room. (It seems like I have told you this before. If I am repeating myself I apologize.) Many of the condos are being purchased by people from China. They are used for vacation homes and sit empty most of the year. Gasoline in Vancouver is almost $7/gallon, a Big Mac meal is about $11, a gallon of milk is about $13, a pound of local cheese costs $15, a dozen eggs cost about $6. (Just across the border in Bellingham, Washington a gallon of gas costs $2.50, a gallon of milk costs less than $3) He said the prices are this high because of taxes. His family lives about a 5 minute drive from the US border. Most weekends they drive across the border to fill up their car, and a couple of gas cans he carries in the trunk. They also stock up on certain groceries. I would have liked to ask him about his views of socialism and all the "free stuff' provided by the Canadian government. He never complained about all the "free stuff", just about the high taxes. I guess he liked the free stuff as long as someone else was paying for it, just like in America. He bought stuff in the US to avoid paying the high taxes.
When we did start the airport check-in procedure it seemed like we stood in lines a long time but it only took an hour to check-in for our flight, check our baggage, go through Canadian security and go through American Homeland Security screening. Once through that we found our flight was delayed for a half hour.
The landing in San Francisco was BUMPY. I think we bounced twice before finally settling on the ground. I guess it was very windy. We landed over 40 minutes late but that was no problem because our flight to Kansas City was also late. (It is interesting that both our Alaska Airline flights to Fairbanks were on time. We flew United from Vancouver to San Francisco to Kansas City, and both flights were late.) It was after midnight, local time, when we finally got off the plane in Kansas City, about 15 hours of travel time.
Kathy had made hotel reservations for us in Kansas City, before we left Centertown. We were able to leave our van in their parking lot while we were on vacation, at no cost, and they provided us with free shuttle service to and from the airport. Airport parking fess would have cost us more than the cost of the room. Monday we (Kathy) drove back to Centertown.
Nolan was here Tuesday, Wednesday & this morning. Lydia gets off the school bus at the top of the our driveway. She gets off the bus around 4:30. We have been driving up to and waiting for her, the temperatures are in the 90's every day. It HOT, especially after 2 weeks with highs in the 60's.
I mowed the lawn Tuesday. It wasn't to bad considering it had not been mowed for 2 weeks.

After school snack time.

 Nolan being a ham.

Kathy is up picking up Lydia right now. Lydia is "sleeping over" tonight.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Photos

 There are 2 ready mix trucks headed somewhere on this barge.
Mule train.

One of the mule train stops. The ship is docked back downstream from the river.

 The fill required to make this place to store cargo containers all came from the spoil at an operating gold mine in the area. It was a LOT of fill.

 ship repair facilities in ketcikan.

 cruise ships parked. Our ship had to wait for one to leave before it coul get to the pier.

 Boarding a life boat (tender) to get to shore.

Ketchikan gets an average of 12.5 FEET of rain a year.

From Ketchikan

Thur - Juneau
The ship docked in Juneau at 8:30, right on time. The Captain, and crew, made up almost 2 hours during the journey here from Haines during the night. We were 2 hours late leaving Haines because a guy on the ship was sick enough that they had an air ambulance come from Juneau to get him. A Doctor in Haines was called to look at the guy late Wed PM. He said the air ambulance was needed, as opposed to taking him to Juneau on a ferry. (I think the ferry ride is 3 or 4 hours. The local volunteer fire department EMS people picked up the air ambulance crew, brought them to the ship, helped get the guy off the ship and into the ambulance and took them back to the Haines airport. I hope the guy had insurance for the air ambulance. Earlier Wed the driver who took us 444 wheeling told about a friend of his who had to use the service.The bill was $35,000.
We were off the ship and waiting for our bus when it arrived. We first went to the Mendenhall Glacier. We saw it when we were here before. It is impressive to see. It has been receding since 1750, 267 years, but it seems that the global warming people have their knickers in a twist because they think man is responsible for causing it to recede quicker in the past 50 or so years.
Then we went down to the waterfront and boarded a boat to go whale watching. We spotted the first whale before we were hardly away from the dock. We were on the boat about 3 hours and saw several more whales. We slowed or stopped when they were spotted so we typically got to see each one multiple times. None of them jumped up in the air. They just came up got a couple of breaths and went back down for 7-15 minutes before coming up again. We stopped at an island lodge for about an hour for a "salmon bake" The food was quite good.
After returing to the area where the ship was docked we walked around Juneau for an hour or so. Even though it is the state capitol it would be at the bottom of our list for places to visit in Alaska. It is just to commercialized. think about being in a large VERY EXPENSVIVE flea market or craft store; that is Juneau. Jewelery place after jewlery place, fur place after fur place, diamond store after diamond store, and on and on. The scenery is great once you get away from the downtown, but to get away you have to have a boat or an airplane. There are no roads in and out of Juneau.
We left the dock at 5:30PM and are headed to Ketchikan. We will dock there tomorrow morning. We don't have any excursions planned while there. We intend to just walk around and enjoy the sites.
Friday - The overnight trip to Ketcikan was smooth. We arrived at 11AM, right on schedule. Ketchikan is much larger than I rembered. Yesterday's information packet said that we those who wanted to go ashore before 2PM would do so via a tender. We anchored in the harbor because all the 5 berths were full of cruise ships. The crew dropped at least 6 lifeboats into the water and those were the tenders. We had lunch on board and then rode to the dock area in one of the life boats (tenders). They are enclosed, which was good because it is in the high 40's and drizzling. We were back aboard by about 2:30, not much to see in Ketchikan if you don't want to buy souveniers made in China or diamonds. One block had 7 diamond stores in a row. Another block had on one side and 2 on the other side. The only explanation I can think of is that there are a lot of foriegners on the cruise ships (and there are, 90 Australians in just one group on our ship. the ones we have talked to are nice folks). These people may be from socialist nations, like those in Europe, that have huge Value Added Taxes (25%) included in the purchase of amost every items. If these folks buy jewelery while on vacation they may try and get away with not telling the customs people in their home countries. If they don't get caught, and they probably would not, they get away without paying the 25% VAT tax.
We have enjoyed our Alaska vacation and would like to see more of Alaska some time in the, but realistically that probably won't happen. If we did come back we agree that it would not be on another cruise. Even with the week long tour prior to getting on the didn't allow us the flexibility we like. We would like to spend more time around Anchorage & Fairbanks. We would probably fly into one of them and rent a vehicle.
AAARRGHHH!! My keyboard or tablet just went nuts and erased a lot of what I just typed, so I had to retype it.
I will see if I can get this posted now, while we are in port and have cell service. I might even attempt to post some more photos.
God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Mon, Tue, Wed

Yesterday (Sunday) after boarding we looked through the upcoming events on the ship.There was a Mass at 5PM and a "congregation led" non-denominational servic listed for 6PM. We went, as did two other couples. One couple was from Delaware the other couple was from Scotland. We had a good discussion about our faith. The couple from Scotland gave us something of a history lesson on the Christian faith in Scotland.
We had a nice lunch at the buffet and an adequate supper at the fancy dining room. (I haven't tried one of the hot dogs yet.) We signed up for "open seating" so we won't know who are dinner partners will be. Last night we shared a table with a younger (early 50's) fromToronto Canada and a couple of old hippies(?).  The hippies, especially the guy, seemed to have done a LOT of traveling around the world. I wonder if at least one of them was a "trust fund baby" living off an inheiritance. None of the jobs they talked about would have provided them with the income to all the travelling they claimed to have done.
Seas started getting rough around 8PM and got a little rougher all night. When I got up we were headed directly into a 40 mph wind. It was up to 50 mph by noon. The last time I looked it was back down to 40 mph. Seas have calmed down a little, it is now 5:30, but they are still at least as rough as anything we experienced on our Princess cruise several years ago. According to the last public address announcement things are going to get a LOT rougher during the night. All the swaying doesn't seem to bother Kathy. I took a couple of motion sickness pills before bed last night, and another one this morning. So far do good for me. We both slept well last night and both managed nice naps today.
We are sitting up on the Lido Deck, level 8, now having a cup of coffee and a cup of tea. It is the deck with the buffet and also with an indoor pool, hot tubs & an outdoor pool. (Temperatures are in the low 50's. I haven't looked but I doubt there is anyone in the outside pools.) Actually there is no one it the indoor pool. They put a net across it. We think the net serves a dual purpose. It keeps people out of the pool because the movement of       the ship is causing a LOT of wave action in the pool, and the net helps control the amount of water that is spashing out of the pool.
Perhaps it is because the Princess cruise was our first cruise but the staff on this cruise don't seem as happy. They are pleasant but there is an undercurrent the the pleasantness is somewhat forced. There are over 600 crew & staff, so far I haven't met one who speaks like he/she if from the US.
Tuesday - At Sea
Seas were very rough in the late evening, and most of the night. The bow of the ship was constantly raising up to plow over the top of a wave and then drop down in the trough behind the wave. Yesterday afternoon we heard we were probably experience 15' seas, I think we did. By around 4AM the waves had calmed down some, but still rougher than anything we experienced on the Princess cruise we took several years ago. We both faired fine. In fact we both slept quite well.
Today we cruised into Glacier Bay and saw several glaciers. According to scientists the glacier in this area was FAR, FAR larger in 1750 than it was today. Between 1750 & 1795 it receded 5 miles. By 1890 it had receded another 40 miles. In the 130 years since then it has retreated another 25 miles. I think it is no longer receding, it may actually be growing again. None of the Rangers doing the narration mentioned why the glacier retreated 45 miles during the 140 years between 1750 & 1890, I'm pretty sure the cause was not man caused global warming.
Note to Tom & Mary Lou - Had my first hot dogs while on board today. They were pretty good. There was a LONG line at the hot dog & hamburger stand. They are so busy that they hand out pagers when you order so that you will now when to come back back to pick up your order.
We arrive in Haines tomorrow morning an are supposed to meet to go 4 wheeling at 6:50AM. Hopefully I can get this posted while we have cell service in port tomorrow.
After a couple of days on the Vandaam I think I would describe it as a high end floating flea market, or maybe a high end craft fair. A substantial portion of the public area is used up by shops for jewelery, HIGH END (expensive) clothing, liquor stores, numerous bars (almost all the food is free but you have to pay for booze), a casino, etc. There is a nice, but small, library area. I'm not knocking this, obviously if people didn't buy stuff at these places the ship wouldn't have them.
Wed - Haines. We docked at 6:30AM and at 6:50 we met the folks that were to take us on a 4 wheeler mountain climbing adventure. Weather was not looking good. Temperature was low 50's and a slight drizzle. It continued improving all day. By 1:00PM it was partly cloudy & 62 degees.
Kathy drove us up the mountain and back down. She did a fine job. We  had a "train" of maybe 40 people in a dozen Kawasaki 4 wheelers (mules?). They had locked 4 wheel drive capability but, even on the steep muddy portions of the trail a single drive wheel was all that was needed. The scenery was once again beautiful.
After returning we walked around Haines for a short time. The population of Haines is 2,500 in the summer and about 1,700 during the winter months. Temperatures don't get real cold, only a handful of nights where the lows dip into the single digits.They do get a LOT of snow, typically over 12' of it over the winter, but never a lot at one time. It is possible to drive to Haines but it is a long drive from anywhere. A barge comes up from Seattle once a week with supplies for the local stores. Their electricity is generated by a hydroelectic plant (renwable energy). It costs them 29 cents per kwh, about twice what we pay in Missouri.
I am back on the ship now, Kathy is still browsing Haines. I won't post any photos with this, probably no more photos posted untl we are back in the lower 48.
God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Sunday PM

We boarded about 11:30. Boarding would have been very smooth except that once we were through security I couldn't find the key card they gave me during check-in. After searching my pockets several times and going through the carry+on bags I was carrying I still couldn't find it. I called a security guy over and told him, "Somewhere between the blond security guy right over there (about 50' from us) and here I lost my key card." He found it under the X-ray machine. Apparently I mistakenly dropped it in one of the baskets when I put my coat in the basket.
Boarding lines moved quickly

 Our cabin

Lunch was good. View from our table during lunch

Tomorrow we will be at sea. I'm to cheap to pay for onboard WiFi & cell service so it will be several days before I do another blog post.
God is good, may He bless you & yours.

Sunday AM - Some Photos

The "juke box" was normally closed. Hinges allowed the lower section to rotate upward and close the box. There was a small viewing window in in the front where you could look in and see this gentleman. When the flap was closed there were buttons you could push to get a song. There was also a slot for contributions. He had a tape player that provided the music, he didn't play anything. He would fake strumming the guitar. He looked like a very old person who might have had a stroke. Sad but interesting. This was at the craft fair in Anchorage.

 Along an Anchorage street. A cheap way to make a raised planter. I might want to put a large trash bag inside the tires before filling them up, to be sure nothing leached from the tires into the potting soil.

 Anchorage had a contest for school kids. They asked for ideas on what things of interest coul be shown around the town. One kid suggested the be Sun & planets, to scale. This is the Sun the different planets are located around town, in their orbital position. Pluto is 11 mes away.p

 One of the "cabin" complexes at the Windsong Lodge in Seward. Our room is on the lower left.

Our room.

 Every room we have stayed in had a device similar to this next to the bed. It has outlets for two 120v plugs & ports for 2 USB charging cables. Nice.

The view from our front porch taken yesterday.

 The view this morning. The mountains are in a low hanging cloud.

In Seward. There is a sea otter in the photo is to small to be seen unless you know exactly where to look, and then it is just a speck of brown.

 Downtown Seward, Alaska

God is good, may He bless you and yours.

Saturday - Seward, Alaska

I forgot to mention that yesterday, on the train down from Denali, we passed through a very small town built around a 10-15 acre lake (Alaska has over 3 million lakes). The lake had a nice beach area. There were maybe a hundred people at the beach enjoying the high 60's temperatures. Guys had their shrts off, gals in shorts & kids in bathing suits I didn't see anyone actually in the water.

This morning we went to a craft market in a parking lot about 6 blocks from our hotel. Kathy bought some fur ear muffs and a Sonoran Hot Dog (for her breakfast). We were back at the hotel in plenty of time to board the bus for our 3 hour bus ride to Seward. The scenery on the trip down was good. We haven't been anyplace in Alaska where you could not see snow capped mountains.
Seward has a permanent population of only 3,000 people. The lodge we are staying at is several miles out of town. We took a shuttle bus downtown and walked around for 90 minutes. The only think we saw worth mentioning was a sea otter out in the bay. Kathy spied it. We watched it dive several times and then float along on its back. I think it had caught a fish and was eating it.
We "facetimed" with Lyda & Nolan for awhile this afternoon.
We had a good supper back at the lodge and will soon be ready for bed. I took a couple of photos today that I will post later. I'm to tired to bother with it tonight.
God is good, may He bless you & yours.

Friday Night in Anchorage

Leftover Thursday thoughts - Almost all of the "workers" we have talked to come up here to work the summer months and then return to the lower 48 states for the remaining 7-8 months of the year. Most of them are young, 20's & 30's, with a few in their 40's. Many of them are college students. During supper last night we briefly talked to 2 young "busboys", one is from Bulgaria the other from Serbia. I would like to hear an explanation of why the resorts must hire foreign naionals when our youth unemployment is high.

Trees - the vast majority of trees we have seen are either spruce (very similar in looks to short needle pine trees), aspen or birch. It is RARE to see a spruce tree with a trunk larger than 6" in diameter. We were told that these trees might be 50-100 years old. The soil is so poor, and the weather so harsh, that they grow VERY SLOWLY. It makes me wonder where settlers found large enough trees to build cabins. Perhaps all the 10" and larger trees were cut down 50 plus years ago. In the Rocky Mountains I think tree don't grow above 10-12,000 feet above sea level. In Denali the treeline is about 4,000'.

Kathy was up early this morning. She finally rolled me out of bed around 7:30. We went up to the main lodge for breakfast and to wait on the bus to take us to the train for our 8 hour trip to Anchorage. We finished a leisurely breaksfast around 8:40 and casually strolled to the lobby to wait for the bus, which we both knew left some time after 9:00. Kathy then took a look at our itinerary and almost panicked when she saw that the last bus for the train left at 8:45. We weren't the last ones on the bus, but there weren't many behind us.

The train tour guy, who was probably in his late 20's, is a 3rd generation Alaskan. His grandfather drove his family up here in a WWII army surplus jeep after his grandfather getting out of the service. It took them months to get to Alaska from Utah. The weather was great again today and we were able to get great views of Denali from the train. He said the views the past 2 days in a row were the best he had ever seen during his lifetime.

The train runs slow. Average from Denali to Anchorage is about 35 mph with occasional spurts up to 50 mph. It was comfortable except for being to hot inside the glass domed cars. Every time railroad staff got the temperature down to a comfortable level there were several people who whined about being cold. (Today's high in Anchorage was 73)
This was one of the first bridges we crossed, don't remember it's name.

 Later we crossed the Hurricane Gulch bridge. A 918' span with tracks 296' above the water. It was build by the American Bridge company in 1921. Today it would take 10 times longer to get through the government red tape than it did to build back then.

Some folks who live "off the grid" are near the railway A couple of days a week, if they signal the train with a white flag placed near the track, the train will stop, pick them up and take them to either Fairbanks or Anchorage.

 View to the west from our hotel room,

 Snow capped mountains down the street to the north.

 We went out walking around Anchorage looking for a place to eat. Two girls were passing out samples of ice cream. Kathy decided she wanted to eat dessert first. Before going into the ice cream shop she had to check out Bear Air.

 We passed by a hot dog cart looking for a place that offered decent looking meals, but didn't find one. We went back to the hot dog cart and got a couple of reindeer dogs. The were good.

Time for a shower and bed. God is good, may He bless you and yours.
PS. Please for give typos and sentences that don't sound right. I'm using my phone & tablet to do these posts.

Thur - Denali Tour

I was standing at the door of the restaurant this AM when it opened at 5AM. Kathy chose a little extra sleep over breakfast (she had leftover pizza for breakfast, a piece we had brought back to the room after supper last night). We met at the main lodge and boarded the bus at 5:50AM. The thermometer in front of the lodge read 37 degrees, I think the overnight low was 35. Then it was off for an 8 hour bus ride into Denali and back out.
We travelled about 150 miles,
One of several stops for photos.

 The bus didn't bother this grizzly bear at all. He just kept digging for some type of root he found tasty. We probably set there watching him for over 5 minutes. He moved about 10' and started digging in a new place just before we left.

 This was at our turnaround point. It was 65 miles into the park and as far as tour buses could go today. Next week the will be able to host to the end of the road, another 30 miles. Denali, or Mt. McKinley as it was known for some years to those of us in the lower 48 states, is directly abvoe Kathy's head. We were still 35 miles from it. Our driver has been doing this for 12 years. He keeps records of weather and animal sightings. He said that Denali weather has been clear enough to see the top of the mountain on 18% of his trips.

 There are a bunch of Dall sheep on this mountainside. You could see them with the naked eye, especially when they moved around. The driver had a 300 zoom video camera that played on screens we could watch. Below this photo is one of the screen.

75 miles in & then 75 miles back out on the same road. The weather was absolutely beautful, bright sunshine with just a few high clouds and a moderate breeze. The scenery was spectaclar. In addition we saw Dall's(mountain goats), caribou, deer, a grizzly bear as well as several types of birds and small animals.
We got back to the lodge at 2 PM. It was pretty warm on the bus, the outside temperature hit 68 degrees. With 50 people on a Bluebird school bus, no AC, it got quite warm inside. Sometimes we were able to go a few miles after someone opened a window before some other person complained they were cold.

I took a nap. Kathy went down to the "square" and read. About 5PM we walked over to a restaurant on the square for supper. On the way we started talking to a couple who were also walking over for supper. We had seen each other on the bus trip. They are from near Bakersfield, CA. As we walked along Les made a comment about something he had seen on Fox this afternoon. I asked him if they were allowed to watch Fox in California. He grinned and said they have to keep the volume real low so that the neighbors don't find out they are conservatives. We sat together and during supper Les seemed serious when he said he had thuught about putting a couple of bumper stickers o hie car, ones with conservative ideals, but he was afraid his car would be vandalized.
After supper we parted company both hoping to spend more time together as our tour/cruise travels progresses. We will be on the same cruise ship. Kathy wanted to walk down to a neat looking pedestrian bridge that crosses the river so we headed off on our hike. It was well over a mile, up hill and down hill. We were both pooped by the time we got back to our room.
The path was a lot steeper than it looks in the photo.

This bobcat was making a level place on the side of a steep hill. I'm not sure how the operator got it down there and I could see no way for him to get back up, short of getting a crane.

 The walkway over the river.

 God is good, may He bless you & yours.

Wed. McKinley Chalet Resort - Denali

I walked over to a speciality grocery store this AM and bought a bag of organic apples. I got there before it opened so I walked around the neighborhood a little. LO & BEHOLD what did I see but a donut store wating for me. I bought several donuts for us to try. Breakfast was 1 1/2 donuts, an apple and a cup of coffee. Our bus to Denali started boarding a lttle after 9. We arrived at our room a little after 1 PM. We made one 20 minute stop on the way.
The scenery is almost breathtaking. I don't think it is possible for me to get my head around the size and granduer of Alaska. Texas is a huge state, we have driven across it. The bus driver made the comment, "If Alaska were divided into 2 states Texas would be #3 in size of states because both halves of Alaska would be larger."

Stuff along the way. At our one stop.

One of the large things in Alaska is the cost of living. Our lunch of fish & chips, a fish sandwich & a salad we split between us, cost $47. The food was good but the scenery is what makes it worth the price.

We are staying at the McKinley Calet Resort, near the northeast corner of Denali. Our room and the lodge complex  are both great.
Our living room & bedroom

 oOur room is the one at the top of stairs.

View out our bedroom window.

After lunch we took about a mile long walk along one of the trails and then listened to a Park Rangers presentation about Golden Eagles.
Kathy is taking a nap. I'm sitting outside in a common area having a cup of coffee and typing this blog post. I'm in the shade so that I can see the screen better. Temperature is a sunny 55 degrees. I'm wearing a tee shirt with an unbottoned flannel shirt over it, like a light jacket. It is a little cool in the shade, but not bad. There is still some snow around in protected areas, but not much at this elevation. The Ranger said they will have the last road in the Park plowed and opened tomorrow. When I walked over to get my coffee I noticed that there is stll a lot of rock salt on steps and sidewalks.

Bus from days gone by? It's at the lodge.

Time to head back to the room. Somebody just turned on some crappy music that absolutely destroys the atomosphere. Does the place think we are in some dark, dive bar in the city? I mentioned the poor choice of music to the people in Guest Services,
Now back at room after a pizza for supper. Kathy had a cup of baked tomato soup. Food was good.
Walking back from the restaurant, which was up the hill and across the street, we walked through the common area. 8 PM and LOTS of folks still out enjoying the beautiful day, still bright sunshine. (the awful music was no longer blasting away).

Our tour of the park leaves at 5:50 tomorrow morning, and lasts 7 hours.

God is good, may He bless you & yours.