We drove up to Talkeetna yesterday evening and spent a night in a beautiful little log cabin perched on the edge of a tall precipice overlooking the Alaska Range. Around 11pm we saw some fireworks being shot off in the village of Talkeetna. They were backdropped by Mt. McKinley, so appeared rather underwhelming given the circumstances! The view from there was absolutely spectacular! We drove about 5 miles over back gravel roads to get to the cabin. (I guess that's almost remote, by Alaska standards.)

We're back in Anchorage right now staying in the Summer Guest Housing on the campus of the University of Alaska-Anchorage. This is the student housing during the school year... They rent it out during the summer. We'll be here for 2 nights then back to our original lakeside B&B.

We spent today in Talkeetna before driving back to the city. That's a cute, if not completely tourist-ridden, town. We saw the great 4th of July parade which consisted of a VFW marching group, a float carrying about 6 older women dressed in red white & blue and handing out flags, a fire truck, an ambulance, and a guy dressed like Uncle Sam walking on stilts. The parade started at noon and was over about 30 seconds later. :0)