Logbook: Nuiqsut to Wasilla, entry 9: We stop at Taco Bell.

I usually call Margie the moment the wheels hit the runway, but I couldn't because my battery was dead. When she is babysitting, as she was today, she sometimes does not leave the blue house until I call and that is usually just about right. But I'm usually on Alaska Airlines and it takes longer to get your bags from Alaska than from the smaller commuter flight, Era. When I reached the baggage claim area, I looked out to the curbside, but Margie was nowhere to be seen.

i found an outlet and plugged my phone in. It seemed to take forever to get a charge. It felt like maybe 10 minutes. Then I called her and it turned out she had been there all the time, just parked a little further upstream out of my sight.

It was sunny and warm in Anchorage: 51°. All the fall colors were present, but were not fully dominant the way I had expected them to be. There was still a significant amount of green in the leafy trees. It all felt so stunningly strange. We were almost out of gas, but we had enough to get to Eagle River so we stopped at the ER Carr's, got a one dollar per gallon discount and gassed up.

Afterward, we pulled into the drive through line of the Eagle River Taco Bell. It felt so very strange to look at that line of cars ahead of me that I retrieved my phone from the car charger, framed a picture of the waiting vehicles and decided to make that my "back on the ground" picture. It was okay, but I thought, "I need a person in here for perspective." No sooner had the thought passed through my brain than this gentleman stepped in front of me, headed for his car.

I ordered a Cheese Quesadilla, a Chicken Burrito Supreme with green sauce and a medium Pepsi, light on ice. Margie had two Taco Supremes and a medium Diet Pepsi, also light on ice.