sholio: Autumn leaf frosted at edges (Autumn-frosted leaf)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2024-09-08 09:41 pm
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Travel update the last (probably)

Last full day of my fall road trip, which is good because I'm starting to receive plaintive "when are you coming hooooome" emails from the Beloved Spouse.

My previous places were pretty swank, but this cabin is appealingly rustic. Well, mostly appealing - it does have running water and the info on the place says that the water is "potable," by which you might guess "won't kill you but tastes terrible" and you would be correct. It was so bad that I went out at 8pm last night hoping to find a place that was open (which I did, a little convenience store at a campground up the road) and bought a few bottles of extremely overpriced bottled water for drinking and tea. I think it's all right for cooking and brushing teeth with.

The propane stove is so old that it doesn't have an igniter or a pilot light - there's a long-handled barbecue lighter to ignite the burners. I think it's distinctly possible that we had this exact stove when I was a little kid in the '70s. It looks just like it. (And I can't get over how much smaller it is than a modern stove, it's like half the size of ours at home. You can see the scale of the stove by the size of the teakettle, which is not huge, it's just a normal-sized teakettle.)

a harvest gold antique gas stove with a red teakettle on a burner

All of that aside, the place where I'm staying is behind an airstrip used by a flightseeing service (not too busy, I see a few planes a day) and the view from the kitchen table looks like this:

a bay window composed of three individual windows, all showing a view of orange and green autumn woods

That's the view out the window, not paintings!

It was cold and rainy today, so I stayed in most of the day, worked on my Closer exchange assignment and did some business stuff related to my book launch on Tuesday. But later in the afternoon I decided to go for a scenic drive out to the Savage River hiking trail (as far as you can drive in a private vehicle on the Denali park road; the drive goes from the park entrance, which is a bit north of here, to Mile 14) and I had no regrets because it was STUNNING, peak colors and sweeping red and gold vistas. It was "I can't believe this is a real place and not a fantasy world" levels of gorgeous.

a vista of red foliage, distant spruce trees, and mountains half covered with clouds

red foliage around a winding river flanked by sandbars, with a bridge across it



This sign implies adventures ahead.

sign says "Moose rutting next 5 miles. Hiking and photography on road only."

After that I was going to be EXTREMELY salty if I saw no moose at all - but I did! It was a cow and a calf, their presence advertised by a large cluster of RVs and tour buses on the side of the road.

scenic red foliage with a cow and calf moose in the middle distance

One more scenic visa:

a winding gravel watercourse with yellow foliage along it, red beyond that, and mountains in the background

And tomorrow I drive home.
scioscribe: men on cliff surrounded by ocean spray (biggles: flung spume)

[personal profile] scioscribe 2024-09-09 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Moose rutting!

Those photos are exceptionally gorgeous. I love the colors.