Amazing flight!

Thursday morning we all packed into a very small airplane and took off to fly into Denali National Park and around Mt. McKinley, also called Denali (the big one). It was absolutely amazing - and a little scary! It was cloudy in spots so we just had brief glimpses of the top of Mt. McKinley - over 20,000 feet high!













From that height, we could see many glaciers - some of them 30 and 40 miles long. The ice on the oldest glaciers is over 3000 feet deep! The stripes on this one were formed when several glaciers came together. The dark lines are the dirt and rocks along the edges of each of the merging glaciers.

Talkeetna is a funny little, laid-back town. It is the base from which climbers leave for Mt. McKinley. We had some lunch there and then took off for Denali itself. The park is really huge - although Talkeetna is at the edge of it, we had to drive north for several more hours to reach the park entrance.

After checking into our cabins there, we explored the area they call "Glitter Gulch" near the park entrance - lodges, restaurants and gift shops - had some pizza for dinner, tried out the hot tub and went to bed as we had to be up early for our float trip down the Nenana River.