June 30

We ended our first month of travel on a high! Spent most of the day traveling on the Petersville Road to an old mining camp and an Alaskan Mining Recreational Area – 64 miles about 6 hours. On the way a miner stopped to talk to us about the area and to warn us about bears. He fulfilled my image of a miner—huge salt and pepper beard, sparkling eyes, lives in the wilderness for spring, summer and fall and spends winters in Indiana.

In the 1920s Chinese workers mined at the Petersville mine while the boss lived up on the hill and could “spy” on them as evidence in the photo below. There are still individuals who have mining claims out here and we saw several who lived in pretty run down camps.

During the winters, they used this old snow cat. On the inside there is a stencil “10 mph max”.

On the way back to camp, we stopped at the tourist town of Talkeetna. It was charming! Flowers and moose racks everywhere, shops full of art, trinkets, food and booze. Had dinner at The Mountain Top Pizza Pie. Our server suggested the Gyro Pizza and it was so good-got to combine pizza and salad all in one. Because it would have been soggy (with the lettuce and tomatoes on top) to have as leftover breakfast this morning, we just sat and had another brew and finished it!

The village is looking for volunteer firefighters, but you need to be able to drive this old jeep!

30 days, 6998 miles. Having a great time. We’ll move south towards Palmer this morning for the Fourth of July weekend. My only question is how do you have fireworks when it doesn’t get dark?