July 1, 2012                         Day 23/60                            Fairbanks to Denali, AK

We arrived in a small town just outside Denali National Park about lunch time. The drive was uneventful on the paved roads between here and Fairbanks. We have traveled much farther in a day over much more challenging roads. Even the views are nothing to write about as there were no views due to the ever present cloud cover.

We did stop at a RV park/campground/restaurant/gift shop/everything place along the highway. The ad in Milepost said it had an impressive collection of mounted specimens and art/crafts/etc. from Native peoples. It had a lot to look at but in the end I got only a few earrings, Mom got a card, and the boys got some candy (not made in Alaska).

Our RV Park is nothing to write home about (or is it since I am mentioning it here?). Once again we are staying it what is basically a parking lot with electrical, water and sewer hook ups in even rows. There is not a tree to be found. This time, however, we are backed up to a row of stores that create a small Alaska-style mini-mall along the highway. Some of the stores have rear entrances. The one closest to us says it has free fudge samples. Uh-oh. There is one 5^th wheel trailer between our trailers. The family is from San Antonio and the wife is a teacher. They look way too young to have a child who graduated from college.

After lunch in the trailer, we headed into Denali NP. We got information and saw a ranger talk about lynx and wolves in the park. We had to go somewhere else to get tickets for tomorrow’s bus ride so we took care of that. There is a $10 per week entrance fee for anyone 16 or over. However, unlike some of the national parks, there is no entrance kiosk at the park border. It seems to be an honor system and a little looser, like so much of what we have seen in Alaska. And yet, it is not a problem.  Mom and Mike have a Golden Eagle Pass for the National Parks. It got all of us in for no additional charge. We just paid for the bus ride.

Mom was chatting with a park employee as she often does while waiting for the rest of us. The woman told us that we could drive directly to the kennels instead of taking the bus as time was tight for us to make the bus. The kennels were unbelievable and all included in the entrance fee. Most of the dogs were out sitting on or near their houses and enjoying attention from the visitors. They were all Alaskan Huskies and had beautiful markings and eyes. There was a dog with puppies and a few others who were behind gates but they also seemed friendly. A squirrel went up a tree at the end of the kennel and the dogs at that end of the kennel went nuts. They carried on for quite a long time. It was really funny. They seemed to be saying, “There’s a squirrel…I know….I can get it….just let me off the leash…there it is…I see it…Hey, there is a squirrel…” Many of the dogs seemed done for the day as it was almost 4 PM and they had been entertaining the public all day. They were lying down close to their houses, just snoozing, but still approachable. Some of the dogs appeared as if they never get tired of the attention. If you stopped petting them, they gently placed their paw on you as if to say, “oh, please, just a little more.”

At 4 PM a ranger with what has to be one of the best placements in the world (if you can get used to the 40 below in the winter, near constant light in the summer and near constant darkness in the winter) gave a talk and demonstration about the kennel. She told about the history of the dogs and their continuous use as pack animals in the park. They are very reliable (they start at 40 below when your car night not) and cheap at just $1 a day. They are much more economical than our cars right now. They even use the dog waste as fertilizer in the park! TMI? They hooked up 5 dogs to a sled and showed them in action. The dogs went nuts when the handlers went to pick dogs for the sled. They all started barking, “Pick me. Pick me.” It was clear that they love their jobs. I think my niece Gina would love it here. There is a waiting list to adopt the retirees. There is probably a long waiting list to be ranger, but they do take student work program volunteers.

We drove further into the park to get a look at the front country area. The river here is braided with small bands separated by gravel bars. We saw a few caribou at the river’s edge too far away for meaningful pictures. At mile 15, they don’t allow cars to continue but there is a parking area with a few trails here so we stopped. Rick and the boys headed up into the rocky outcropping immediately. They are all such mountain goats. Mom, Mike and I headed to the river. It started to sprinkle so Mom and Mike headed for cover. I wanted to get a view from the bridge. Along the trail, I came upon an arctic squirrel. We played a game of hide and seek. It ran into the drainage tube under the trail that was only slightly bigger than its body. It popped its head out the other side. Then it ran to the other end. This went on for nearly a minute. Eventually, it gave up and scurried away.

On the drive back to the park entrance, eagle-eye Rick spotted a grizzly on a distant hillside. How he can use binoculars in a moving car, I’ll never know. We pulled over to set up the spotting scope. But the grizzly didn’t cooperate and had walked over the ridge.

After a dinner of game brats, we took the boys for ice cream at the store behind our trailer. It was tourist pricing (unlike Dawson) and not nearly as good.

After I did the dishes and Dominic showered, someone decided to turn off our outside water supply. This has never happened before and we can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it. In all the campgrounds we have been in, there has been a sense of community. Even the folks who lose track of time (easy to do when the sun is almost always up) are cool about quieting down if you let them know. We are the last trailer in the row, so it isn’t as if someone turned it off thinking it was theirs. Very strange. For the first time, I feel a little vulnerable.

July 2, 2012                         Day 24/60                            Denali National Park, AK

This morning we boarded a bus for a 6.5 hour driving tour of the first 53 miles of roadway into Denali.  Our bus driver Dawn was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. She used big scientific words which I loved at the time and now can’t remember. I hope they are filed in my brain somewhere and weren’t tossed out. We passed through boreal forest, taiga, tundra, and braided river valleys. I am not going to give you a play by play of what she told us. It would not mean as much without the fabulous views.  The landscape of Denali National Park and Preserve is really quite varied. I saw areas that could have been rocky bluffs of the southwest and the forests of Ohio.

I was glad we got to the line early. Luca and I scored a front seat right behind the driver. The wheel well provided a nice foot stool for him and I got to look out the front window, thus avoiding bus sickness.

Just before Mile 15 we saw some caribou by the river and one lying in the low growing birch trees closer to the road. I don’t want to sound jaded because the caribou are amazing animals, but a few pictures and I was ready to go. Some of the people on the bus must not have seen many animals on the roadside. They clicked away with their zoom lenses.  I just hoped this was a good sign for many animal sightings along the way.

Before long, we spotted a moose grazing a little ways up the hillside. She was just far enough away to be a brown blob in my zoom lens. Then another caribou hiding in brush by the side of the road. Come on. I am here for bear, grizzly bear.

Finally, a grizzly on my side of the bus. S/he was up on the hill but close enough for photos. He gave a great show. Hide in the bush. Walk out and eat. Sit and root and eat. Scratch ear with back paw like a house cat or domestic dog might. Thank you bear. Turns out that the Toklat grizzlies found in Denali are smaller than their coastal cousins. Still, s/he was very cute…for such a deadly predator.

We made a few stops along the way for restrooms and to see the river view. We ate lunch on the bus because they don’t want a concentration of human garbage at these stops. They do a good job of protecting the animals form human contact and habituation. In fact, when our bus pulls up to an animal we put our windows down but are not to talk and all body parts must stay in the bus. They don’t want the animals to get used to the sound of human voices or the look of the human form.

One thing was missing from our trip, however. We didn’t see Mt. McKinley. Apparently, it makes its own weather and what it makes is usually clouds. You only see Mt. McKinley 1 out of 5 days on average. That average includes the winter months with less daylight but a higher number of sightings. Why more in the winter? The temperature at the top of the 20,000 foot snow-covered peak is very cold and in winter there is less differential between the temperature at the top and at the lower elevations. Therefore, fewer clouds are created.

After our bus ride, we went to the Murie Science and Education Center (I think that is what it is called, I am not stopping to look it up). This is a center for all the research being done in the park. Teachers, students and researchers use this area. There were a few displays for the public. I was too tired to really appreciate it. Who knew riding on a bus, scouring the landscape for wildlife could be so tiring.

Rick and Mike walked the 1.5 miles from the park entrance back to the trailers. There was a pedestrian bridge that Rick wanted to walk on. It crosses the Nenana River.

We voted for dinner out. Yay! Pizza at Prospector’s Pizza only a half mile walk. I broke down and had a cola (perfect cure for my headache).  After yummy pizza and a few beers on tap for the other grown-ups, we walked in and out of the shops. It was mostly junk and a lot of it was not Alaskan. Dominic did find a ring (that boy has a ring problem).

Tomorrow we are off to Anchorage for several days.    

July 3, 2012                         Day 25/60                            Denali to Anchorage, AK

Today was a transit (or moving day). We drove the 237 miles from Denali to Anchorage. Very little happened. It was cloudy so there were no views of Denali/Mt. McKinley. We stopped at the Alaska Veterans Memorial. It is a nice rest stop on the side of the Parks Highway. There are huge monuments to the branches of the military. There are nice informative boards about Alaska’s military involvements. Did you know that Alaska was involved in the US Civil War? Neither did I.

We drove 14 miles out of our way to lunch in Talkeetna. We pulled over in a large dirt parking lot a little ways out of town. There was a smallish building at one side of the lot for the Community Free Store. People donate things. If you need something they have, you take it. Mom went in with the boys to see about boots for Dominic and would make a cash donation. They didn’t have anything. Just before we pulled out, a big passenger van pulled up and out piled several girls in long skirts with braids. It looked like a Mennonite family. It must be hard to support a large family in rural Alaska.

We tried to see downtown Talkeetna, but there was no RV parking available. We drove around the parking and got a glimpse of the area. There were several people walking in and out of shops. This area is home to many flightseeing tours that take people by plane to see Denali. There is even a Princess Cruise Guest Services office, but no RV parking. So we moved on.

We stopped in several places to look for fishing spots. At the first place the state had closed fishing. The second place was too muddy. The third place no fish were biting per the man Mike and Rick talked to. Onward…

We drove through Wasilla, Sarah Palin’s hometown. We got a picture of the welcome sign but did not leave the highway. It has a lot going on for a town of less than 8,000 people. They have a Target, a Wal-Mart, a Fred Meyer, and at least two car dealerships. Millbrae has 3 times the population and nowhere near the infrastructure.

The Chugach Mountains rise up out of nowhere here. They remind me of the Tetons. Everything is flat and then WHAM! There is a mountain range. The tops of these mountains were covered in clouds too.

Anchorage is really big. It has over 680,000 people. We don’t see much of it on our way to the RV Park. We have to back into our spaces, which is a bit difficult for the big trailer as there is another big trailer right next to them. Mike and Rick do a great job communicating and get it backed in.

Conveniently, there is a Costco practically across the street. We head there for dinner and to pick up a few things. Sadly for me, this means another Pepsi. Can’t start that habit up again. Even a large chain store like Costco does not have nonfat milk with an expiration date that works for us. Darn we will have to come back. That’s ok. We will need meat again too. Then there is the gelato in the food court. Oh, I didn’t mention the gelato? They have stracciatella (really chocolate chip), pistachio, or berry. You can get a triple scoop in a waffle cone for $1.50! That is definitely not tourist pricing.

July 4, 2012                         Day 26/60                            Anchorage, AK

We started our day at the Anchorage Museum. It is right in downtown Anchorage but being the 4^th of July, things were quiet. We decided to park on the street at a meter but not feed it. There were no helpful signs indicating if meters were enforced on holidays. I felt uneasy walking away from the car. I was pleased to see there wasn’t a ticket on the windshield when we came out.

Another great thing was using my Coyote Point membership to get us all in free to the museum. I love the reciprocal benefits from this membership. We don’t go to Coyote Point much anymore but the membership paid for itself in savings today.

The Anchorage Museum is a strange mixture of classic art museum, kids’ discovery zone, Alaskan history, contemporary art, and planetarium. The classic art section was very nice and had several pieces Dominic liked. We all enjoyed the Imaginarium Discovery area. The whole area was hands on. It was like a miniature Exploratorium. There was a physics room with a Rube Goldberg-like machine that moved small balls through a series of levers, elevators, wheels, etc. There were machines to demonstrate Bernoulli’s Principle (scouts). As much fun as this was, we all enjoyed the bubble room the most. It had the horizontal bar for making a wall of bubbles. There were large metal rings in bubble solution for making long worm-like bubbles. Something I had never seen before was a circular platform with a moat of bubble solution and a hula hoop suspended from a pulley system. One stands on the platform and pulls the rope to raise the hoop out of the solution encasing oneself in a bubble. It was great fun.

By now we all had worked (played) up an appetite. We went in search of the Falafel King. This guy is from Mike’s hometown, Haifa, Israel. Yelp said he was open even on the holiday. Alas, he was not. We headed back to the trailer for lunch. The boys were happy to have a warm lunch and not cold cuts or cheese like on travel days.

After a quick bite, it was off to the Alaska Native Heritage Museum.   We did not get in here for free and it wasn’t cheap. We got there in time to see 4 young people demonstrating native Alaskan sports. They have their own Olympics and these sports are related to skills people need to survive in harsh climates. These athletes were amazing. Their feats of jumping, kicking, etc. were unbelievable. One of the young ladies was even a former world record holder. She didn’t look that athletic but that just shows that you should not judge a book by its cover. At one point she did a one arm handstand kicking a ball suspended almost 6 feet in the air while holding her non-kicking foot with her opposite hand. What? I know! It is almost as hard to believe as it is to explain. These sports have been incorporated into the PE program at the schools.

After this demonstration, a young Navajo (what is he doing up here?) man told us about the various native peoples living in Alaska. The Athabascans are linguistically related to the Native Americans of the southwest. Ok, there is the Navajo connection, sort of. The Athabascans have 11 different languages and 22 dialects. That is amazing. Eskimo is a French-Canadian word meaning “Eater of raw fish.” Some natives find this offensive. If you ever find yourself in Alaska, it is safer to say Native People (in Canada it was First Nations). I looked up Inuit when we got back to the trailer. It is not as pejorative but mainly applies to natives from a different area of the north.

We headed outside for a tour of native dwellings. The tour was included in our admission. Unfortunately our tour guide was a trainee. She was nervous and seemed to have memorized a script for each area rather than having a real understanding of the material. Hey, we have all been new at something, right? Anyway, we enjoyed seeing the different types of winter homes. There were also more sled dogs. We didn’t get to interact with them, but they would be happy to give us a 2 minutes sled ride for $10 each. We passed.

From here we headed back to the first museum for a 4:00 planetarium show about the Cosmos. It had a separate fee (no reciprocal). Mom and Mike had decided to explore more of the museum. The planetarium was small – 49 seats. The narrator was not a famous person. The material was very familiar.  Dominic knows the material far better than the young lady (maybe not even out of high school) who read the script toward the end.

At 5 PM, Mom joined us for a Led Zeppelin light show. It was OK. The images didn’t seem connected to the music in all the songs. I was expecting it to be more like the ones at Griffith Observatory in the late 80s. There was a strange part that was like Mad Max meets the pod racing scene from Star Wars I. I give my mom props – she didn’t even know Led Zeppelin music and she made it through the whole thing.

Fireworks and firecrackers were the theme of the evening. Our neighbors from just across the fence (I guess it is a road and not a railroad track) lit off firecrackers from 7-11 PM. It was not dark and they made loud booming sounds. It was very annoying. I left the boys to watch a movie with the grandparents and came back to shower. When the boys returned, they said Mom was filing a complaint at the police non-emergency number.  At one point, I heard Mike yell at them. I don’t know what finally worked (maybe they just ran out of ammo). I didn’t hear much nearby after about 11 PM.