Talkeetna and Sitka

On the way to Anchorage from Denali we stopped off in the little town of Talkeetna, which supposedly was the inspiration for the fictional town of Cicily in the TV series Northern Exposure a few years ago.


It was another pretty little Alaskan town and was a great enroute stop to stretch our legs for a bit and have lunch before heading down the road to spend the night at Elmendorf. Was popular with the cruise ship folks, too, as evidenced by a half dozen tour buses that filled up the town with people on their way to spending a canned day or two in the National Park up the road. What a way to travel!




This really is "Outback Alaska". Started by gold rushers barely 100 years ago, the town now includes the usual assortment of Alaskan "characters"...trappers, miners and subsistence hunters and fishermen, combined with those making a living off the tourists who flock here every summer. It's also command central for climbers wanting to ascend Mt. McKinley every May & June, and is the starting point for several of the "Around Denali" flight seeing experiences. A lot going on here for such a small place.




Beautiful downtown Talkeetna.

Sitka

Arrived here late Monday evening after an uneventful flight from Anchorage by way of Juneau. The town sits in a very dramatic setting - on the water with the mountains just behind it. It's advertised as being the prettiest of all the small Alaskan towns but so far we're reserving judgement...been a bit rainy so far. Supposed to clear up later today, so the plan is to buy a couple of day passes on the local buses and ride all 14 miles of paved road in the vicinity of the town.



St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral - one of the remnants of the Russian settlement here.



A look inside St. Michael's.




The sky cleared for a few hours yesterday evening, so we got a glimpse of just how pretty the area really is.







One of several Victorian era homes in the "downtown" area.



Rita in Totem Park.


Lots of Alaskan history in this area. Totem Park in the National Park tells the story from the Tlinket (pronounced Klinkit) perspective of their running 5 year battle with the Russian occupiers from 1799-1804. The Tlinkets actually wiped out the first Russian settlement in 1802 at a site about 6 miles north of here...or "Old Sitka" as it's known. Knowing that the Russians would be returning the Tlinkets relocated to a more defensible site here in the present township. Didn't do them much good. The Russians did return in 1804 with a large number of ships, including one warship, and after a 5 day battle proceeded to blast the local tribe into submission. There then followed many years of an uneasy peace after the Russians took occupancy of the site, fortified it, and established their trading operations here. Sea Otter pelts were the economic attraction, and over the course of the next 20 years the Russians nearly hunted them to extinction.

After losing the Crimean War to the Brits in the mid 19th century, the Czar determined that his American holdings were undefendable, so to thwart British designs on the region he opted to sell Alaska to the Americans in what was famously referred to for years as "Seward's Folly" but which in time has come to be recognized as one of the great land deals in history.