Montana Creek Campground; Willow, Alaska

Good morning, my friends. We took our time driving yesterday. The drive was short, and our check-in time was relatively late. Nevertheless, we were able to check-in as soon as we arrived at Montana Creek Campground, about 15 miles south of Talkeetna. The town of Talkeetna is our reason for stopping here.

Our view from the day was another day of spectacular mountain scenery.

The weather was clear, and our Milepost suggested several places we might be able to see Denali. We stopped at the first one, and lo and behold...it's a little hazy, but there it is!

Our Milepost also told us about this next section of the highway. It was better seen heading northbound, and we were heading south. I was dealing with reflections on the windshield when I took this next shot. Still, I think you can see where the highway passes over a section of the old highway. The old highway crossed the railroad tracks. This section was replaced with reconstruction completed in 2016.

The Milepost suggested stopping at one of the pullouts. We'd been seeing lupine lining the highway for much of our drive, and I captured this clump at the pullout.

Also, our old friend, the creeping dogwood.

The Milepost suggested this stopping place to see the commanding view of the Alaska range. Looking to the left, it looked like this:

Looking straight ahead, it looked like this:

Looking to the right, it looked like this:

The range of mountains extends from horizon to horizon there. Turning directly around and looking behind me, I saw this:

But this next image shows the best view of Denali we were to see on our drive yesterday. We're told that only 30% of visitors actually get to see the mountain. Indeed, during our time in Talkeetna last night, we found a t-shirt to that effect.

We crossed the boundary into Denali State Park. 

This is how I got messed up on my navigation distances. When I brought up Denali National Park on Google maps, it also brought up "Denali Park." I thought "Denali Park" and "Denali State Park" were the same thing. Actually, Denali Park is the name of a town just north of the national park turn off. Duh. Anyway...all's well that ends well. We got to check Denali off our bucket list. We were able to get another view at the south end of Denali State Park.

From there, it wasn't long before we crossed over the Susitna River.

And then just a few more miles to our campground.

Just before turning off, we crossed Montana Creek. There were fly fishermen there.

This is a primitive park, meaning we have no hook-ups of any kind, and no place to dump our tanks either. (This is often the case when a park is located near water. Local ordinances sometimes prohibit any sort of sewage tanks near water.) No worries, there are several dump stations along the highway we can use. Most require a small fee.

It's a private space, and so nothing would do until we got Smitty out for a walk.

He found a good crop of his favorite wide-blade grass right away. Nom, nom, nom.

We'd already planned to have dinner in Talkeetna, and we just walked up and down the main street. Our first stop was the quilt shop. I'll say more about Talkeetna and the quilt shop in separate posts. 

Today is another semi-chill day. Our drive to Hope, Alaska, tomorrow is one of the longer drives on this trip, and so we'll give ourselves a chance to relax today. We'll also do our grocery shopping since we're nearly out of food. There is a good-sized grocery store nearby. I'm on battery power here, and so I need to write fast. I'll be back a little later to tell you more.