Five days on the ferry. Very peaceful.  We sat or stood watching the sea slide by.  Sometimes it was very narrow about us and above were mountains, some yet with snow.  here and there a glacier.  Humpback whales spouted nearby every day.  Dolphins, the streaky ones that look like miniature killer whales broke the surface too, sometimes following us.  We experienced a sundown, our first in a couple of months.  And, a sunrise.  How pleasant.  The trees grew larger each day.  Waterfalls streamed from vertical walls. 

I write from an RV park near the now ghost town of Portage.  Typical of many Alaskan towns it coalesced about a native village near where gold was discovered.  There was not much gold and then given that there was not much other reason for it to exist, it disappeared.  And so the forest returns.

We’re finishing our last day in the Denali region.  We’ve enjoyed it all.  Watching glaciers pouring from the Alaska Range, a moose with calf in the parking lot, alpine tundra in bloom, the gaudy green of Alaska forest and tundra in June, and even a few mosquitoes.  This afternoon we topped it off with a tour flight to the edge of the summit of Mt. Denali (Mt. McKinley, the Big One, etc.)  The glaciers flowing off of the big one are very big ones. 

Saturday (June 17) afternoon in Palmer and I am taking a break during this day of chores.  We arrived safely last evening at the Anchorage Airport after our five days in Dutch Harbor/Unalaska.  We may now say we have visited the Aleutian Islands.   Dutch Harbor is a beautiful place with rather awful weather.  At the time of our arrival, however, the weather was pleasant, and the view when landing was spectacular.  The plane turned in from the sea between two ranges of mountains and descended over the blue bay.  Waterfalls rained off the green cliffs.