Denali Highway (Cantwell Highway)

July 2-3 (Friday-Saturday)  We left Denali Park and headed down to Cantwell, then across the Denali Highway, also called the Cantwell Highway.  This is a 135-mile road, with only the first 3 miles and the last 20 miles paved.  Most of the time Joe was driving around 20 mph, plus or minus.  Before we got onto this highway, a bald eagle flew up from the ground, right beside us. 

The road had lots of small potholes, and was washboardy in many places, but all in all, it wasn't too bad.

I had one other fact from the Denali Park that I wanted to write down regarding the Dall sheep there (I lost my note when I did that blog).  There are approximately 2200 sheep in the park.  The rams have horns that curl in 5-7 years, and then they become a trophy.  The ewes horns do not curl.  The one lone ram we saw on the very top of a ridge had a beautiful set of curled horns on him.

On the Denali Highway, the first noteworthy thing we came across was Joe Lake, which they use for flightseeing.  Joe thought we definitely need a picture of this, even though we couldn't find a sign calling it "Joe Lake."

We drove past miles of brush along the road, and out in the middle of nowhere, someone had decorated a bush like a Christmas tree.

Joe and I are still fighting colds, but I felt quite a bit better today, so I think I am on the mend, with occasional coughing spasms.  Joe, however, is still feeling pretty rough, and he is still doing a lot of coughing.  Hopefully, by tomorrow he will begin to feel better.

We had hoped to see some wildlife on this drive, but all we saw was a ptarmigan, and a moose running in a river valley, a long ways off.  But the scenery was beautiful, with views of the Alaska Range and some glaciers.

We got on the road about 9:30 this morning, and drove 109 miles.  We found a spot just off the road about 3:00 to camp.  In exploring the area around our campsite, we came across an animal hide, we think it was a caribou.  The pictures are a little gruesome.

We don't know if this animal was killed by hunters or by another animal.  This camp spot is used by hunters, and there was a pair of rubber boots by the carcass, so we assume it was hunters who left the hide.

Shortly after we got set up for the night, it started raining again, and we got to see our first Alaska rainbow, then a double rainbow.  The first rainbow was really brilliant.

It rained most of the night but our camp spot had enough gravel that we didn't have any trouble pulling out on Saturday.  It was really foggy for a while, but we were able to see another glacier.

We saw several beaver lodges in ponds, a couple snowshoe hares and several trumpeter swans as we continued on.  We made a pie stop on behalf of David about 11:00.  This place had an awesome statute of a bear, so we knew it would have good pie.

This place was expecting a Princess tour bus in about any time, so we finished up and got out of there.  They had a gift shop and dog kennels across the river, but we didn't stop there.
We were driving in the clouds for a while as we topped the MacLaren Summit at 4,086 ft.  This is the second highest pass you drive over in Alaska, the first one is the Atigun Pass on the Dalton Highway (which we also went over).  The clouds were really impressive, and the landscape was speckled with pools, creeks and rivers.

The valley in the photo below was just beautiful.  It actually has a river running between the mountains, but that doesn't show up in this picture.

 

Then our first mis-adventure of the day happened.  David had a front tire go down on his truck, just 1/4 mile before we hit pavement again.  So Joe helped him get that changed, and there happened to be a tire repair shop a mile down the road, so he stopped in there and had it patched.  We paid $95 in Canada to get a tire fixed; he got by for a measly $20.

Back on the road again, and now on pavement, we went through a region called Tangle Lakes.  This lake is one of a series of narrow lakes connected by the Tangle River.  There were a lot of quad riders in this area, and a lot of people camping along the road.

Finally, we hit the main highway (Richardson) and headed south to Glenallen, then east toward Anchorage.  We are camping tonight 14 miles east of Glenallen, right on a creek.  In fact, our RV is backed up right to the edge of the creek.  It's raining again, and I sure hope this creek doesn't rise tonight.

Glenallen has a 4th of July celebration so we are planning on driving back in tomorrow to take part in the festivities.  There is a parade at 10:00 a.m., and they close the highway for it so we have to get our timing right.  It will be interesting to see how Alaska celebrates, since it never gets dark here in July.

Denali National Park

Thursday, July 1 -- Today Joe and Wilma had an Excellent Adventure. Dave and Mazie opted out of this tour, and Collins and Marilyn are on their way to Anchorage to meet Marilyn's sister who is flying in on Saturday. 

Joe and I took a 66-mile bus ride into Denali National Park.  This park is Awesome.  It is 6 million acres of wilderness, there is only one road into it, and most of it is gravel.  The mountain, Mt. McKinley, showed itself for us - a rare treat.  And we saw lots of animals.  Although it rained during the night, today turned out to be fairly sunny, and the 8-hour bus ride was very enjoyable, even with all our coughing (I'm not sure everyone else enjoyed that part).

Our first animal was a ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird.  There were two of them here, but only one shows up in the pictures.  It's that little tan spot in the grass, just before the bush.  We actually saw three of these today.  There were also some seagull-type birds in this area.  These birds are called mew gulls, but they look like seagulls, white with gray feathers.

Next we saw a caribou.

We saw several of these today.  It was a great day for seeing animals.  Caribou lose their antlers between December and February each year, they start growing new ones in the spring and the antlers are usually mature by August.  There is what they call a "shovel" part of the antler that comes down to the nose.  It takes 5-7 years to grow this shovel, and then the caribou becomes a trophy.  There are approximately 2500 caribou in the park.  These caribou do not migrate -- most of them live in the park their whole lives.  They usually have just one calf at a time.

Then we saw a couple snowshoe hares.  And a Great Northern Harrier Hawk.  And two golden eagles.

This is a gorgeous park.  The scenery, even without the animals, is spectacular. In this picture below, you can see the magnificent Mt. McKinley rising in the background, totally snow-covered.  It's very rare to get to see this mountain in the summer because it is usually clouded in.  Today, there were clouds, but we finally did get to see all of it.  I'll post several pictures with clouds, but as we were on the return trip, the clouds cleared and Joe got some good pictures of all of it that you can see, above the mountains in front of it. 

Here's just some scenery pictures that Joe took. 

This mountain is off to the left of Mt. McKinley, and it is called Mt. Foraker.  (Joe was trying to zoom in on Mt. McKinley, and he got the wrong mountain.)

At one rest stop, they had some antlers to look at.  Here's Joe as a caribou.

The moose antlers were halved, but Joe said just one half of them was much heavier than the caribou rack.

And here's another picture of that mountain, with no clouds blocking it.  This is the tallest mountain in North America, at 20,320 feet. 

Here's a great shot of another caribou.  We saw 14 caribou in the park today.

And finally here's a bear picture.  We actually saw 9 bears today, all grizzlies.  The first one was a sow with 2 cubs, and the cubs were playing.  Then a few minutes later, Joe spotted two big grizzlies by a bush.   Then we saw a mama with 2 cubs up on a ridge.  When we went around a corner, there was a caribou with a calf running across the road, and heading right toward the bear with the cubs we had just seen.  We didn't get to wait to see if they met up, but we hope they didn't.  

This bear was digging, either roots or after a ground squirrel.  It was the closest one we saw, so Joe did get some pictures of it.  They estimate there are 300-350 grizzlies in the park.  There are some black bear here too, but we were not in the area where they are found.  Grizzlies usually have 2-3 cubs at a time.  The grizzlies in the park are blonde, due to their diet.  They are mostly vegetarians, but they do eat a little bit of meat if they have the opportunity.  The grizzly we saw at Skagway was much darker brown.

We love seeing the bears!  And we got to watch this one for a few minutes, which was awesome.

Just about at the end of our tour, we saw our first moose of the day, and we did see one more right outside the visitor area.  There are approximately 1200 moose in the park.  Moose usually bear twins, but they can have from 1 to 3 babies at a time.

I think I've mentioned Alaska's braided rivers before.  Here's a good picture of one.  They are fed by glacial water, which carries a lot of silt.  When the river channel fills up with silt, the water finds another channel.  That's what makes them braided. 

We also got to watch 2 gray wolves cross a big valley.  It was too far away for a photo, though.  And we saw 7 Dall sheep, which are always real far away, up on high ridges.  Dall sheep are only found in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. 

The small pools in the picture above are called kettle basins.  They form when a piece of ice gets jabbed into the ground.  When it melts, which might take years, it forms a pond.  Sometimes these dry up, but not always.

That pretty well takes care of todays lesson.  We had a great bus driver who told us a lot about the park, and I wanted to get it written down so I don't forget it.  So, now everyone who reads the blog knows a lot more about Denali Park!

Fairbanks to Denali

Tuesday and Wednesday, June 29-30.  Today is our final day in Fairbanks so we went for a drive out the Steese Highway.  I did laundry first thing this morning, but it started drizzling rain about 10:00 a.m. and did that the rest of the day.  On our drive, we stopped at an old gold camp and had lunch and pie, then stopped at a little pond where a beaver was swimming around.

We stopped at a couple rivers looking for possible gold panning sites, but the mosquitoes were so bad it was hard to stay out of the car.

We see a lot of moose antlers decorating buildings out here.  I keep looking for a rack on the ground but haven't come across any yet.  We did see some caribou antlers on our way back from Prudhoe Bay but they were in the very wet tundra so we couldn't retrieve them.

The other thing we keep an eye out for are animal carcasses because we know Brenda collects them.  Joe thinks this is a bear skeleton.  I tried to talk him into bringing it home with us, but he didn't think so.  And when I tried to lift it up, it still had meat on it -- I think it was pretty fresh.

We drove about 50 miles out this highway, then turned around.  The beaver was the only wildlife we found.  We did stop to pan for a little bit, the rain was just a sprinkle at this time.  Mazie thought she found a couple flakes of gold, but she lost them before we could come up with something to put them in.  I did not find anything.

Gold panning is a lot like fishing -- a lot of effort, always thinking you are going to have some success, but often going home empty-handed.

We often play cards at night.  We play 4-handed euchre with Collins and Marilyn, or 6-handed pitch with the whole group.  Pitch is David's game, and he sometimes adds a few strange rules during the course of the game, if it appears that his team might not win.  Tonight's game had a little different twist.  Marilyn brought over a "new" deck of cards, and on the very first hand, two jack of hearts showed up.  David had the second one, and could not figure out how the first jack had already been played.  It was quite confusing - and had him confused the rest of the night, although he still managed to win.  We know not to trust him, but now we are afraid he has corrupted Marilyn, since she brought over the cards.  She admitted that they had used these cards last spring in a game that required 3 decks, but we don't know if we believe that excuse.

Wednesday morning we headed out of Fairbanks to Denali.  We crossed the Tanana River at Nenana, the town that has the tripod contest every year on when the ice on the Tanana River will break up. The tripod is planted two feet into the Tanana River ice between the highway bridge and the railroad bridge.  It is 300 feet from shore and connected to a clock that stops as the ice goes out.   Joe, Mazie and all bought chances for next year's contest.  This is as far as barges can come up from the Yukon on the Tanana River.  From here, goods are loaded onto trucks or trains for delivery to the Interior of Alaska.  

This is the part of the framework that sits on the ground.  The second photo has an image of the kind of tripod they use to put out in the river.  This year's pot was $279,030.  Chances cost $2.50 each.

Nenana also has an old Episcopal Church which was built in 1905.  It has hand-hewn pews and a raised altar decorated with Native beaded moosehide frontal and dossal hangings.

We got to our campground about 4:00 p.m., 8 miles north of Denali National Park.  We drove into the park to make reservations for a bus tour tomorrow, then drove the 15 miles allowed to public driving.  We found a moose at the beginning of this drive, saw a caribou at the turn-around, and then came upon a moose and calf just before we got all the way back.  We are hoping to see a lot more animals tomorrow, including some bears.

We had dinner right outside the park, delicious halibut again.  If you have never had fresh Alaskan halibut in Alaska, you don't know what you're missing!   Joe and I are both fighting colds, we we hope to be up to our 8-hour bus ride through the park tomorrow.

North Pole, Alaska

Monday, June 28 -- We finally made our trip to see Santa, but unfortunately he was not scheduled to show up until 6:00 p.m.  Lots of kids write to Santa here.

They have a wonderful gift shop -- lots of things to spend your money on.  Joe found himself a polie bear, but it doesn't fit in the RV so we left it there.

Tiffany, you need this clock that is a countdown to Christmas.  You would love this shop.

I developed a relationship with a moose here, but Joe said it didn't fit in the RV either.

Since Santa was not in, Joe decided to fill in for him.

We went outside to check on the reindeer, but they had changed their pen and put in a second fence, with a sign that said "don't feed the reindeer," so Joe didn't get to make friends with them this time.  I believe Donner and Blitzen are here, but I didn't see the names of the other ones.

Kaylee, since I didn't get to talk to Santa about you and what you wanted for Christmas, you might want to write him a letter.  Grandpa took a picture of the address so you can do that.

This was our only adventure today because we were still worn out from the Prudhoe Bay excursion.  We got back to the RV about 2:00 and Joe took a nap.  Tomorrow we hope to try to find some GOLD!