Tuesday 2 July
Today we had a later start, and it was a super warm day. The Beringer Family came over and it was ‘Gun Day’! We started with a lesson on safety and guns and the importance of not treating them like toys. The amateurs started first and shooting at clay targets which was so much fun! We started with a .22 rifle, then Tayla and Josh moved onto a .257 AR15 Semi-Automatic, then Larry asked Tayla if she wanted to shoot a .375 caliber pre-1964 Winchester Model 70 Rifle and she accepted the challenge. He was impressed with her braveness! Then Tom Berringer shot a .460 caliber Rifle. The same caliber that Fern shot her bear with when she was 10. It was such a buzz as Tayla and Josh had never shot a gun before and Chris’s only other shooting was in Alaska previously.
When we went to Church on Sunday we met Cindy Peterson who had previously been to NZ offered to take us to see her Peony Farm and give us a tour on quad bikes around their 800-acre property. We met up with Peggy in the afternoon and set out to the farm on Montana Creek Road. It was hot (30 Degrees) and dusty. We met the family who showed us the Peonies and then took us around the farm, showed us his crops, roads he was building and dreams for development of their farm and then Mark Peterson showed us his metal work which was awesome. We were covered in dust (even worse than the day we went out to the cabin). We came home and showered and then we all went around to the Hicks for Dinner. Peggy, David, Katelyn, and John Hicks came to New Zealand on 1st January this year and stayed with us for a week before traveling around NZ. We had a lovely night with them and David organised to take Tayla and Danika for a flight around Denali (Mt McKinley) in his float plane in the morning.
While the girls and Josh went on ATVs to the peonies, Larry and Ross went up in the cub.
Landed on a ridge, a little bit of a bumpy landing … we sort of hit a rock. Larry didn’t seem phased, “it’s what Cubs are designed for!”
Then we followed the river back to town. Some amazing scenery, but with the temperatures hitting record highs, no sign of wildlife, I expect they would have been all in some shade somewhere.
Talkeetna even got a mention in the paper back home;
“Alaska climatologist Rick Thoman tweeted Anchorage, Kotzbue, Talkeetna, and Yakutat all posted their warmest June on record while Nome, King Salmon, and McGrath logged their second warmest June.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/114010402/alaska-set-for-record-heat
