Night #18: Talkeetna, AK. 4900 miles. When arriving in Talkeetna, we got our first good view of Denali on the south side of the range. There was an entire mountain above the highest line of clouds. Man. We ate at Mountain High Pizza and listened to the banjo/violin stylings of the Flat Mountain Girls. Talkeetna is one of the raddest towns we've ever been to. It is 14 miles of the highway so still fairly sleepy and clean from the inflitration of cruise-y tourists. It is the town from Northern Exposure. There are still locals there (almost all men) and they live, in the evening, at the town's 5 dirty little pubs. We stayed at the campground that was at the end of the main street. It's a little drinking community where all the McKinley climbers take a flight from. We took a flight the next morning around the mountain. It was a clear day, remarkably, and what we saw was unreal. Not sure I can describe it here--I'd get all choked up. We flew all the way around Denali at 12,000 feet and were still a mile below its peak. If you go to AK, there is no reason not to blow all your money doing this. It was so beautiful it made me want to throw up. Also, we landed on a glacier and breathed it all in for a while.