The Mountain and the Park

 

It's Been A Long Time....

Continuing the saga: Leaving Tok for Fairbanks

We left off at Chicken Alaska, on July 12. The next few entries will be mostly photos and a few captions for clarification.














The drive from Tok to Fairbanks - Mountains galore and a view of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline




















July 14 Downtown Fairbanks




July 16th - the quest for McKinley
Nenana is a quaint town between Fairbanks and Denali National Park. The Nenana Ice Classic is a kind of contest where they sell raffle tickets (for a good cause of course!) to anyone interested in winning the pot. The challenge is guessing exactly what day and time the ice tower will tip from the melting ice. In the beginning of winter they roll this tower onto the ice in the river and it sits there all witner long until spring thaw. The guess is what day that thaw will be enough to tip the tower. And yes, we all bought raffles!
The fish wheel is sort of illegal in most places, but it's used to catch fish by the dozens at a time. It goes in the water and the current turns the wheel. The fish are swimming the opposite direction so they just get scooped up and flung on shore into a waiting bucket or something.

The ride toward Denali National Park had us on the road at the entrance well past the closing time. So we drove up and down the highway looking for a place to stop for the evening.

Hard to find a camper-friendly rest stop so close to the park!











JULY 17th in Denali National Park

Getting ready for the long winding bus ride through the park to a great vantage point for viewing Mt. McKinley. The mountain comes out of the cloud cover only 30 percent of the time, and we were actually lucky enough to get a glimpse....with some beautiful scenery and interesting sights along the way.















It was quite a ride through the rugged terrain, even with an experienced driver the view out the window was harrowing to say the least!!! Until we finally got to see "the mountain" peeking out from behind the clouds...

This mama moose stopped traffic for about 10 minutes while she took her time ogling the tourists and browsing the ground for something to snack on.

When she finally cleared our path, we continued on. Rounded the next bend and got yet another glimpse of the elusive McKinley.

This was truly the highlight of the bus ride. We found out later that day that the next bus trip after ours was not as lucky. They didn't see the mountain at all. We left at 5:30 in the morning and returned at 2 in the afternoon, and we didn't even take the bus the entire route! You can't drive inside the park past the first few miles. Only tour buses and limited campers can drive all the roads in the park. And even at that, the roads only cover a tiny fraction of the park - it's too big to see in a day and you have to be equipped for extremes if you want to hike and tent it on the trails.

After a much needed bathroom break, we continued on and got closer to the mountain...

Some of the wildlife, although abundant, is too far away to get good photos. Oftentimes we just got a look out the bus window.

We saw wolves, bears, sheep, hawks, ptarmigans, bald eagles, and so many others but from a distance mostly.

You probably can't see it but the next two photos actually have a bear and her cub wandering through the meadow. It's so far away it just looks like a white dot in the center of the photo. Hope you can all zoom in to see it!

This was the road that continued on to another spot in the park, but our trip was done and we were ready to turn around.

This is our best shot at seeing Mount McKinley. It is 20,320 feet high and is the highest mountain in North America. Even with this spectacular shot, we are still 10 miles away from the base.

It truly makes you realize how small we really are.

More to come on this trip to the park, but for now please have a very happy Thanksgiving and enjoy Black Friday!

Ahhh...... Home at Last!

Well, now that we're home and able to work on High Speed Internet, here is the continuation of our trip.

This is July 12, our ride from Tok to Chicken, Alaska. (It was supposed to be called Ptarmigan, the state bird, which looks a bit like a quail, but no one knew how to spell it) Chicken is a quaint little roadside town that is owned by only one person. The guys went panning for gold in the creek - the miners get the gold from the mountains in the area and haul some of the rocks down to the creek for the tourists to try their hand at gold panning. Gary actually got some...a few flakes in his pan...the gift shop workers take it out of the pan and put it in a vial for you for a dollar.

The ride to Chicken was a 66 mile trip on a road that was under repair for 90% of the way.

This is a milder version of the construction. Many of the roadside shoulders were steep dropoffs.











The post office...


The regular post office employee was off this day, so the employee's friend was filling in for a while. Guess they can do that in Chicken...

The bulletin board had the usual FBI's most wanted posters, but the interesting thing was the Sunday picnic food list. Seems the whole town gets together and brings dishes and the post office was the place to sign up and put your contribution on the list.

The best fun of the day was going to the restaurant/gift shop/saloon.

At the saloon they had a pool table and a bar. The main attraction to this bar was the cannon.

What's the big deal about the cannon, you say? Well, anyone who was so inclined could get free drinks just by handing their panties over to the bartender to be shot out of the cannon!

No, you won't find MY panties up there!

We drove past a forest fire while going to Chicken. It was interesting to learn that sometimes they don't rush to put the fires out. They watch them from a safe distance to make sure they don't threaten any homes or life, but for the most part they burn freely. One of the first plants to grow after a fire is a beautiful red/pink flower called fireweed. It grows abundantly here, and you really can see where fires were just by spotting these flowers.

Most of the ground here is on "permafrost". The dominant tree that grows there is black spruce. You can tell where the permafrost is by spotting spruce bogs, where the ground seems to be blackened by fire. It's actually just wet, thawed and frozen over and over again. These trees are very hardy and have survived the weather for hundreds of years. The soil layer that the roots take hold in is only a few inches deep. Even though the trees may look small and scraggly they could actually be over a hundred years old!

Joe and Gary decided to see just what this permafrost is all about. They walked through a bog and got a very short distance before their feet started sloshing in the muck. The top layer is very spongy and wet...and yes it is very cold.

...So...

That was our day in Chicken, Alaska.