Nagley's Store, Talkeetna

We were about to jump out and visit the little town of Talkeetna for the first time when I realized that we were famished and had only eaten a Cliff Bar for breakfast. It's pretty funny when you are running around like we are, how you can literally forget to eat but thankfully, right around the time that I am overdue to eat I sneeze and realize it's time to eat. So I sneezed, and we looked over to see Nagley's Store. It's a local landmark and has been written about in all kinds of travel guides and magazine articles. They had a restaurant called West Rib Pub and Grill. We walked in and the place was literally, well, 100 years old. It's been around 100 years. The floor creaked. There was a soft spot I avoided. The walls were lined with a century of antiques and niceties. We were of course greeted instantly by a friendly Alaskan who was doing 3 jobs at 1 time. It's safe to assume that the average alaskan can perform at least 20 jobs well at any given time. I have never seen such a capable group of people. We walked back to the restaurant area and were greated by a young lady who said something to the effect of "two?" I replied yes and she just said 'come on". She wasn't rude because she had a grin but I could tell she was a pretty tough woman. And she was wearing waders.... We sat in the back of the restaurant and we saw they had Caribou chili fries, Caribou burgers and all kinds of other awesomeness. So we ordered what I mentioned and we were super excited even with a mounted Caribou looking at us from across the restaurant. We learned in Talkeetna that we could not be in a hurry, nor tear the town up, or even quickly browse a business. I believe it's called Talkeetna.... because the people like to Talk so much! Even the depressed people will absolutely talk your ear off once they know you care and it is precious! We were sitting not being in a hurry, when a big beautiful and well fed Persian cat just came walking by us at the restaurant. I of course figured that if there is a cat in a restaurant that is not Chinese, I should talk to and pet the cat. I did, but it was too busy living its life to pay much attention to me. Then, the server who was the awesome pretty intense lady turned into an 8 year old girl and started talking to and grabbing up the cat. The server explained to us that this was the current mayor of Talkeetna. She spoke of Stubbs, the original winner of an election via write in vote, who reigned for 20 years. Then, in 2017, Stubbs passed on, and the same family eventually had Denali and Princess, who locals now say are the mayor and co mayor. They do politics interesting here we discovered. The food was awesome, the service perfect, and the experience was one that I recommend any good person have :-) Oh, and we were SO THANKFUL to find 4 packs of Reeds Zero Ginger Ale. It was literally the only thing we had to drink for a week other than water and coffee. We LOVE this landmark.

Cool old general store. Cat that use to live here was elected mayor but he passed in 2017 sadly. Has some neat local stuff, a liquor store and ice cream.