People are Leaving!

A lot of the tour directors are beginning to go home so they can start school. This makes it hard because it gets me thinking about home. I miss you all very much and I can't wait to see you.

Levi, Wyatt and Chase - I'm sending big hugs and kisses your way! Mwaaa!

My 28th birthday was spent in Denali on the Tundra Wilderness Tour. It was great! I lost count on how many bears I saw. I know it was over a dozen. One of the bears was in a river bed feeding on a caribou carcass. I don't have pictures of it because I could only see it through binoculars.











Don't I look older here? I'm 28 ... closer and closer to the dreaded 30 ...










This caribou got close to the bus. The antlers on this thing were massive and it still had its velvet on.




This is the Sourdough Cabins the tour directors stay at while working in Denali. They have two double beds, a shower that spits water and gets more on the floor of the bathroom that the person in the shower. And the water smells like sulfur. Other than that, they're great. The water is my only complaint there. It's almost like I'm at summer camp when I stay there.

I took a motor coach up to Denali while deadheading to Fairbanks, and on the way we stopped in Talkeetna for a potty break. This is the town the television program Northern Exposure was based off of. The show began taping here, but the actors complained that it was too cold so they moved production down to Roslyn, Wash. It is a tiny, quirky town! They have all kinds of odd festivals that go on including the Moose Dropping, Mountain Momma and Wilderness Woman festivals to name a few. (I tried uploading the pic, but the connection is too slow ...)

Update ... I wrote this a couple days ago in Fairbanks. I arrived in Denali around noon, and my day is now complete. My tour - a tour 16 - is going well. It goes to prove my theory that land first people are happier!