The waiting game

Today is the day.  Tomorrow I embark on a solo journey up to and across the Denali highway.  It's a day and a half ride to the highway and then 135 miles of remote gravel road followed by another 80 miles of wilderness to the Alaskan highway.  Then another 190 to the Canadian border and into the Yukon!

It has been raining and I am dressed almost entirely in cast-off clothing from the Talkeetna roadhouse where I washed my soaking wet clothes and took a really lovely shower for $10.  It's expensive here.  But I needed a hat and got one for free out of the lost and un-found bin which is great because the cheapest hat in town is $35.  So overall a win.  

Yesterday I paddled a green canoe to this cabin on long lake.  

Trespass cabin, made for the use of kind trespassers and lovers of cabins in the wild.  I spent the night here and paddled back to Melissa and Spencer's dry cabin early this morning.  In the rain with the cool voices of loons in lieu of a playlist.   

When the skies are clear you can see great mountains behind the lake.  

I rode into town with Melissa and Spenser and then headed 3 miles up the road to the library to look at maps.   The library was closed of course so I rode back to town- soaking wet and muddy- and holed up at the beautiful coffee shop where I wrote notes for my trip

I'm certain I won't have cell service - at least not at all in Canada so I took snapshots of maps and wrote a rough mileage plan indicating resources along the way.  

I chatted with a lovely fellow named Tim at the coffee shop. He is a seasonal worker, plans to study intentional communities and practices yoga so we got along well and talked about Alaska of course.  

Talkeetna is a great town - I love the locals.