Day 11: July 14, 2019

This is our last day of driving.

Sugar Magnolia said that this blog is all about pictures of gas stations, rather than pictures of the mountains. Accordingly, this is the perfect time to include pix of mountains as we'll be driving past Denali. To pacify Sugar Magnolia, Brother Larry took this pic for her.

The following is a close-up of the purple flowers shown on the pix.

We followed the Nenanna River, which was beautiful.

This was all just past the little town of Denali - an outdoors sports paradise.

Here we are inspecting the River. 

We stopped at a local restaurant for lunch, as Magellan needed food. He was getting a little crabby. (N.B.: no gas station pix).

We found Bullwinkle and her two calves, but could not find Rocky.

Denali is behind a front of short mountains and is often shrouded in clouds. Because I could not get a good pic of the mountain, I pulled this off the national park service web site. It is a beautiful place, with a peak of over 20,000 feet. 

As we moved toward Anchorage, we went through the town of Wasilla. This pic is for Sugar Magnolia. Note that there is no reference to Sara Palin. I think Sara is staring at Russia. 

Fairbanks was a dump. But Anchorage is pretty cool. We went to a great restaurant for dinner. 

Brother Larry has been talking all week about "buttermilk," and was anxious to have me try some. He told me that it is an essential when eating cornbread. I have no idea what buttermilk is made from, or how they flavored it to taste like paper mache. It was awful. 

Brother Larry and Magellan claimed that the way to consume buttermilk is to break bits of cornbread off, into a glass of buttermilk and eat it with a spoon. If they both weren't so honest, I would not have believed them. I tried that too - cornbread and buttermilk -- and it tasted like vanilla paper mache. It is one of those southern things I don't get. 

Brother Larry at a plate of nachos, a skillet of corn bread, a huge glass of buttermilk, and he was still hungry. So he ate a pizza.

Brother Larry's wife is flying to Alaska tonight. And Larry needs to pick her up from the airport. I persuaded him to sign-up for Uber. And in preparation, Larry got us back from dinner to the hotel on his own, in an Uber. Another first. I am so proud.

I remember the trepidation I felt when my children went to school on their first day. I have that same gut-wrenching feeling - thinking of Brother Larry navigating his way to the airport on his own via Uber.  

We drove 381 miles today, for a trip total of 4,379 miles.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to ride my bike back to base camp. Accordingly, I am dropping the bike off to be shipped home. I'm flying home, and Magellan and Brother Larry are riding home.