Talkeetna, AK

Talkeetna is a tiny touristy town. We spent the first week in August there and enjoyed a relaxing week off from zipping all over the place to get everything done in the small amount of time we have. You see, there’s not a lot to do in Talkeetna. It reminds me of Eureka Springs, AR but smaller…if you can imagine that.

In the photo above, you can see Main St. All of it. Everyone in Talkeetna walks because the town is so small and there’s not very many parking spaces.

There was a general store that wasn’t really a general store. It didn’t have anything useful in it. Maybe I looked in the wrong section?

Talkeetna is geared for three main things…mountain climbing, river rafting, and plane tours. We really weren’t interested in doing any of those things so we spent our evenings walking down by the river or at a park…just relaxing.

This was our view from the river. Nice view, right? Mt. McKinley is the tallest one on the right.

We had a few days where the views were just spectacular with no clouds!

There’s a railroad right next to town. We found a path to it one evening and walked out on the foot path next to it. There was a sign there that said the residents of Crow, AK use the bridge as a way to get to and from their homes on the other side of the river. There are no streets there.

There was a fantastic park!

It had a wooden xylophone!

All of the parks in Alaska that we’ve seen have been decorated with a tribal theme. Alaskan’s seem to be very proud of their heritage…it’s woven into every aspect of their life.

At this park there was a climbing wall. I’ve noticed that the parks here also start prepping the kids for what it takes to survive in Alaska. Rock climbing is very big in Talkeetna…they start them young building the coordination and muscles that will allow them to excel at this.

At the elementary school playground there were more xylophones and drums right on the playground! What a great way to develop a love of music while scaring away any bears in the area!

So, this place is my favorite place in Talkeetna. We went one afternoon and took a tour of the facilities and learned how they make birch syrup.

Birch syrup is made from the sap of birch trees, which are in abundance in this part of Alaska.

Birch sap can only be collected for three weeks out of the whole year. They have just three weeks to harvest enough sap to make the syrup for the entire next year. They run these tubes between the trees to collect the sap faster. It takes 110 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of birch syrup. The sap looks and tastes much like water when it comes from the tree.

They then send the sap through a reverse-osmosis energy efficient machine to concentrate the sugars to 67% which gives the syrup its fine color and flavor.

From the reverse-osmosis machine they put the syrup into this cooker. It boils the syrup and has to have constant attention to stay at the right heat. The syrup is stirred almost constantly to prevent any hot spots.

Once the syrup has reached the right temp/color/thickness, it’s poured into buckets and is ready for packaging. They bring the sap to the kitchen and it’s turned into syrup within 24 hours and they start all over with the next day’s collections.

During the tour we got to taste the syrup. If you look at the picture above, you’ll notice that the bottles in the front have colored stickers on them. Each bottle represents one day during the three weeks of the syrup season. The yellow bottle is batch one, the pink bottles right after that represent the early runs. The green bottles are the mid run, while the red bottles after the greens were the final run. Amazingly, each run has a very different color and taste and is good for different uses. While the early batches are very sweet and better for things like candies and pancakes or even ice cream, the middle batch is not as sweet, but still very tasty on pancakes. The final batches were less sweet…almost bitter…and would be best used for cooking or in sauces.

In the gift shop you could buy the syrup, but they also offered some tea and candies and jams that had all been made with the birch syrup. I bought some caramel creams that are my new favorite candy. It’s soft, mild, not too sweet…it’s delightful, and lucky you…you can order it online if you want!! It’s called Alaska Gold Nuggets.

The 2015 year was their 26th harvest. They tapped eleven thousand trees and purchased sap from a few families to get a combined harvest of 120,000 gallons of sap. This produced 1100 gallons of syrup. This year, with the colder weather, the trees produced a sweeter, lighter syrup. Each of their trees ended up producing about 13 ounces of syrup a piece.

One morning we drove out to Denali State Park. There wasn’t much there. We did get a map of the state park that the boys both loved to look at.

We stopped at the Denali State Park South View Point for this view. Mt. McKinley is there…behind the clouds. It’s still a great view!

See y’all on the road!

#alaskabound