-----It was 7:20 when we left Denali and took the Parks Highway southbound amidst frigid temperatures that reached freezing for a while. Our goal was to get to the town of Talkeetna before 10:00 for the possibility of a flight around the south side of Denali. While forecasts for Talkeetna and McKinley Park indicated clear skies, Denali itself was projected for snow. But weather changes on a dime in the Last Frontier, and we would kick ourselves if we canceled without giving it a shot.

-----Morning on the Parks Highway was astounding, with very little traffic at all as we saw the remaining epic peaks of Denali National Park and the adjoining Denali State Park. The solitude of being alone on the road with the mountains in the morning light was a wonderful experience, and we took in what we could as we kept a beeline to Talkeetna.

-----Getting to Talkeetna is kind of ... well, slanted. Given its position on the Susitna River, getting to the town from the southbound Parks Highway requires doubling back for 14 miles to get to the town. We pulled off well before the downtown and went to the company which was to take us over Denali, where we learned that all three of the highest peaks would be covered in clouds for the rest of the day. They offered to fulfill our reservation and simply take us over lower glaciers and 5,000-foot peaks, but we've hiked atop both in the past and we figured that it wasn't worth the money if we couldn't see the highest peaks.

-----This gave us time to explore downtown Talkeetna, which is a unique little place to say the very least. It's as if all of the Pacific Northwest got compressed into a beach town and then plopped on the side of the Susitna. There are tiny restaurants and even tinier shops, and it was clear that the brunt of tourist season was only the beginning; when we left, there were far more vehicles of all kinds coming in. People walk and bike hither and thither over the streets in assumption that oncoming tourists will see them.

-----Talkeetna is not a big place, and we parked at one side of the one-street downtown and walked to the other, scoping out the not-yet-opened eateries. When we got to the gravel shores of the Susitna, we saw several large tents set up as an outdoor shop with the sign "Mexican Moose." This was an eclectic conglomeration which sold many hats, even more knives, local bead artwork, and cinnamon-roasted almonds which turned out to be a cinnamon-vanilla-sugar-butter pecan-almond-peanut mixture. After a sample, we bought a bag of it and ate it while walking near the river, and it was gone by the time we walked back.

-----We ducked into a store called "Mostly Moose" that really lived up to its name, as most of the items for sale were moose-themed. My dad was having a lot of fun, but there was nothing there we wanted to buy until we went through a middle section of the building to a twin store on the other side called Bears & Beyond, where we found a dorky Christmas ornament for Mom's collection. We were just about to leave—and, in fact, my dad had already paid for the ornament—when I saw a t-shirt that said "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger—except bears. Bears will kill you." There was something about the shirt and its advice and the way it was printed that spoke to me, and I simply had to get it.

-----By this time, the lunch establishments had just opened their doors to business, and when we walked into Mountain High Pizza Pie pretty much across the street, it was already slammed. It was in the mid-40s, but the wind was picking up and we were lucky to get the last inside table. We split a ten-inch special, which was a Thai chicken pizza. I can't say that I was a huge fan of how the chicken was cooked, but the rest of it really tasted fantastic, with just the right blend of onions, peppers, and peanuts to balance with the white sauce base. The crust was also quite flavorful and had a consistency of neither bread nor wafer, two singularities in the pizza continuum into which many crusts find their downfall.

-----On the way out of Talkeetna, checking out the shop windows and artists' tents as we did, we went into Nagley's Store to find the legendary mayor of Talkeetna, who is a cat named Stubbs. The place is a bit of a local dump and is a convenience store sans gas station, whose only claim to fame to attract the wayward tourist is the cat. But they told the folks in front of us that Stubbs was "in retirement," which makes me wonder how long he's been dead. They don't advertise that he's dead since, presumably, a mayor by any other name wouldn't be as effective a tourist trap. Though all online sources state that the 20-year-old cat is still alive and still the mayor, I'm wholeheartedly convinced that it's all a conspiracy and that Stubbs became roadkill many moons ago.

-----We had but one final stop to make (after pulling off on Yoder Road, much to the excitement of our trip mascot): Flying Squirrel Bakery and Cafe, closer to the beginning of the spur road than to Talkeetna itself. This was purely for the purpose of getting a Wi-Fi signal, as our phones still refuse to work in Alaska even though they rightly should, but while there we figured we might as well get some snacks because it's kind of rude to use the Wi-Fi without getting something. Everything looked scrumptious, but one bite of the lemon barley half-moon shortbread cake—which was described as "buttery" by a local—was very clearly made with as little sugar and gluten as possible. My dad's ruggelach, a rolled-up pastry with apricot pecan cream cheese filling, was reportedly sweet with every flavor in every bite, while Mom was a fan of her shortbread. Maybe I was expecting the wrong thing from the west-coast crowd, but I like my sugar and I'm not afraid to admit it.

-----We got gas at the extremely busy station at the intersection of the Parks Highway and the Talkeetna Spur, where everyone in the area got gas. As we continued on the Parks southbound, we were on the busiest road we've been on since Fort Saint John; not even Whitehorse's 20,000+ people got that busy. The great thing is that it was all going north, but the bad news is that the Alaskan drivers liked to pass slow RVs without regard for things like blind curves and blind hills. It wasn't too bad pothole wise—I'd expected worse—so we made tracks down to Wasilla.

-----We headed to the Hatcher Pass area, and it wasn't long before we saw the signs for Independence Mine State Historical Park. We headed into the bowl-shaped dip in the mountains up the winding alpine road, and as the mine area opened up before us, we could see that it was covered in snow. It was in the low 40s and dropping towards freezing, so we laced up our hiking boots and pulled on as many coats as we could and headed up the road.

-----I remain unconvinced that Alaska has any idea of how their budget works. Their operations have been funded solely from the principle of there always being oil money, abolishing statewide taxes and even paying citizens a stipend. This manifests in an utter complacency and mismanagement when it comes to revenue generation at all levels, for at the park, the road beyond the first parking area was closed off, with no ranger to enforce the $5 fee that most were neglecting to pay. We all sort of figured that the road ahead must be damaged or snow-covered, so we walked it ... all the way up to the completely plowed parking lots. There was no reason to close it off unless to enforce the parking with fewer rangers, which they didn't have.

-----It was a little while up the road until we got to within site of the decaying mine, and fortunately for us, the locals had trudged out the paths. Such trudging ended up creating a hodgepodge of footprints jammed into snow that was nearly two feet deep at its deepest and still nearly a foot at its lightest. The snow was light and dry and gave way instantaneously, sliding and crunching its way from two feet into an inch or so above the trail. We stuck to the footfalls that came before us wherever possible, as creating new paths through the snow was much harder and made our jeans wet. Our poor hiking boots again bore the brunt, and our feet stayed nice and warm because we kept moving; staying still made our jeans too wet in the nearly freezing weather.

-----We managed to make it all the way up to the largest extant mineshaft area, where the snow had really built its way up. We couldn't stay long at the top save for getting pictures of the decrepit shacks, slowly collapsing, with the snow piled atop, and our reasons for getting back had as much to do with the fact that our jeans were soaking from the knee down as for the dark cloud in the distance. As we journeyed back, the snow hit us in flurries. The first thing we did back at the car—aside from kicking ourselves for not bringing ski pants—was to put on our regular socks and shoes and hike the socks up so the jeans couldn't make us cold anymore. The view out to the Chugach range was epic, and the thin fog that covered the region made the Palmer area look like a great calm sea.

-----We soon made it to Palmer, which was gorgeous all the way around. The mountains framed the small plots of farmland and everything we kept a beautiful green; it was not the dark green and light green of the spruce and aspen that grow even on the Arctic Circle, but a flowing green straight out of a postcard—and this is to say nothing at all of the mountains around us, into which we seemed to be heading towards. We got on the old Glenn Highway and crossed over the Knik River, where we turned on a road that parallels it and followed its winding and hilly path past private property with a plethora of "keep out" and "no trespassing" signs before getting to the very end of it, where our cabins overlook the craggy mountains we'd seen parts of for most of the day.

-----The cabins are quaint, perched in rows on the hillside, and their interiors make it a contender for the best cabin we've stayed at. The shower looks like some sort of Star Trek transporter and the heater is an actual small transportable fireplace-looking thing. But Wi-Fi is only available in the office/restaurant area, they said, so my dad and I went down there for a while after requesting a third set of towels for our room. After about an hour down there, we asked if the towels were ready ... only to find out that they weren't ready and the front desk lady was clearly frustrated at having to do the job of the housekeeping staff and marched over to their yurt to straighten things out. In the meantime, we realized that we do sort-of kind-of get a Wi-Fi signal in our cabins, which is enough to get by.

-----We'd been fortunate enough to avoid the intolerable Tourist Season thus far, but this is Memorial Day weekend and we make preparations accordingly. The cabins will be absolutely slammed tonight, as will the adjoining restaurant, at which we originally had 9:00 reservations that we were only able to move to 8:30 at the last minute.

-----The food was simply the best meal we've ever had on any of our trips. The crab cake was simply falling apart with Thai flavors, and the French onion soup and house salads were straight-up incredible. I had a seafood sampler, with was a rich pasta with white wine cream sauce filled with juicy salmon, thick prawns, and tiny pearl-sized bay scallops, and the freshness made everything even better. My parents both went for a 12-ounce ribeye, and the few morsels I had from my mom's steak were full of smoky flavor and marbled to perfection; it truly melted in your mouth. We split three desserts: a rich orange cognac crème brûlée with absolutely no burnt sugar at all, a rich chocolate cake thing that was delicious as well, albeit a bit too rich for my taste, and a cheesecake slice with raspberry sauce atop. Our complements to the server ended up with meeting the chef, since everyone else who was eating had left, and we told him that we'd eaten in 49 states and 9 provinces and that his meal was absolutely top-notch.

-----Tomorrow: a hike-filled day as we work our way to Anchorage.