Denali bound - Alaska part 2

Day 1: We started early morning to drive to Denali via Talkeetna. We decided to have a quick breakfast and head right off. I was glad to find a McDonalds nearby because believe it or not there aren't many regular north american food chains there! Being from Atlanta my husband asked for the regular southwestern chicken burger and the person at order counter said you get that only in south :). He was from Texas! Thankfully he knew what we were talking about :) We asked him how he landed here and he said better paying job. I guess thats what most of the reason for people who relocated here was because of tourism being such an important industry. Second to it was to attend university. But each one of them had a love for Alaska!

• After that we made our way out of Anchorage. We had a GPS, but I was engrossed in a book called "Milepost by Kris Valencia" . I had read on online forums about this book and was very impressed how well the author had given mile by mile locations, viewpoints, food and gas station information. 
• A one big thank you to all the people on "travel forums and blogs" which made the Alaska trip planning so much easier and decisions so well formed. From driving instructions to cruises to what camera equipment and rains and cold gear to take, there was a lot of information everywhere. 
• Another big thank you goes to the "Alaska Tour saver book" which saved us a lot of time and money with great resources and deals on hotels, cruises, tours, train tickets, helicopter rides, rafting, kayaking, ATV, dog sledges, museums etc. It saved us a total of about 500-600$ on the trip and the savings could be easily anywhere between 1000-2000 for a longer trip.

We hadn't gone a few miles from Anchorage when the beautiful scenery began the unfold. Giagantic mountains and vast land covered with vegetation and pictursque scenes wherever we looked. The only words I could think of was in exclamations!! Every second the car moved forward, I yearned for the scenery just left behind and was excited in anticipation of what I would see next. My husband was driving and I was the official photographer. He enjoyed his drive while I toiled at getting good shots from a moving car. Its like I feel I missed so much and yet its like I saw so much that the camera could hardly capture.
We have had an opportunity to visit Yosemite and the great smokies living so near to the smoky mountains national park in the past. With Yosemite, I thought I had seen the most gigantic of the mountains, but this beats it. The mountains were tall and extremely pointy, they looked like the ones we drew in our drawing books when we were young :). I would say though that Yosemite is a beauty in itself and very different and  as compared to some parts here.

As we passed through beautiful green fields, lakes, streams and mountains, we reached a quaint small town called Talkeetna about halfway between Denali and Anchorage. We took a halt to check out the town and mainly for lunch. This is where we were to have a first look of the great mount Mckinley and take a helicopter ride to the mountain. But the flight seeing place told us the weather was not permissible to fly that day and neither was mouth Mckinley visible. We were not able to get the view of the mountain that day. With fingers crossed, We hoped back into the car and started back on our drive to destination Denali and on one of the most memorable drives till date!. Check out the pictures on next post!