Day 7 - Friday, August 21, 2009

We were up very early on Friday morning to catch the 1st flight off the island.  Josh came and picked us up and dropped us off at the airport.  The plane was delayed taking off, but soon we were off and flying over and away from the island for the last time. 

It's only about an hour to/from Anchorage, and before long we had landed, collected our bags, and were on a shuttle van to the RV rental place.  Once we took care of the paperwork, we loaded the RV, familiarized ouresleves with everything, and then we were off . . . to WalMart and Pizza Hut.  We needed to stock up on food supplies and Jeanette wanted lunch.  Jeanette loves Pizza Hut, but I think it is completely sucktastic (no offense Jeanette). 

Soon we were pulling away from Anchorage, heading north toward Denali National Park.  The first hour or so of the trip was disapointingly normal.  There were beautiful mountains and things, but we drove through several small towns that looked a lot like just about any other town you drive through, with the same fast food and strip malls .  Unfortunately, we had to drive through Wasilla - a town permanetly tainted with the stench of the former defeated vice-presidential candidate whose name is not worthy of appearing on our blog.  If given ANY choice at all, I would have driven around this city, even if it had added hours to the trip, just to avoid this town.  But, there was no choice, so I had to be satisfied to refuse to spend a cent in this town. 

After the first hour or so we were finally out in mostly wilderness on a 2 lane highway.  Unfortunately, it was still a little dull - there just wasn't much to see - the topography was pretty flat and there were dense aspen forests up to the road's edge.  At clearings in the road we started to see the top of an enormous mountain.  We quickly realized it was Mt. McKinley, or Denali!  That was pretty impressive because we were still 100 miles and a couple hours away.  We had been told that on perfectly clear days Denali can be seen in Anchorage (150 miles away).  Our incredible luck with the weather has lasted even through today.

I was driving fairly slowly to enjoy the scenery and to get used to driving this behaemoth vehicle.  I was glad I did, because at 1 point, out of the middle of nowhere, this enormous cow (female) moose ran out right in front of us.  I slammed on the breaks and didn't miss it by far.  That was the closest I've ever some to hitting anything bigger than a squirrel.  You don't realize how enormous moose are until you're up close to one.  It was also lucky that no one was standing up in the RV at the time or they would have flown out the windsheild and hit the moose. 

A little farther on and the scenery got much better.  It became hilly, and then we were in some spectacular mountains.  The dense aspen forests gave way to open spruce forests and sometimes tunra.  There were also some man-made scenery.  We drove by this wierd site and just had to stop, turn around, and investigate.  We found out later that it was built years ago as a hotel, but it never met code, so never opened.

Before getting to Denali, the road skirts the edge of Denali State Park, which looks beautiful, and then the southeastern boundary of Denali National Park.  The park is enormous, so you're actually driving parallel to but across the Talkeetna River from the border for quite a while before you actually make a left turn into the park.   We had to stop to get our customary picture at the entrance to the park, and the kept driving west deeper into the park. 

This is the Talkeetna River, the one that you drive along for awhile adjacent to Denali National Park.        Left of the river is the park. 

Jeannette - The Intimidator

We didn't stop by any of the main park buildings because we they had already closed.  There was almost no one else on the road, and by now it was starting to get dark since we were arriving pretty late.  We did see a couple of moose from the road and stoped to take a better look and try to take sme pictures.  If we had known how many moose we would see during the next few days, and how much closer they'd be, we would have just kept driving, but the 1st sighting is always exciting!

Tundra in the eastern part of the park on our way toward our campsite.

More tundra and spruce forest.

Denali at sunset.

We got to our camp ground and I was happy to see that it wasn't very full.  There weren't many RV sites to choose from, but there were lots of tent sites open, so the place didn't feel too crowded.  We circled around once, and the very nice campground host stopped us and told us that we were too late to check in like we were supposed to, but she'd let us stay for the night and we would get properly checked in the next morning.  Man, that's my dream retirment job.  You get to camp in some of the world's most beautiful places all summer long.  She told us that they were expecting a good Northern Lights show that night at about 2am.  None of us had ever seen the Northern Lights, so we were pretty excited about that.  I don't remember what we had for dinner, but I do know that we got there past the time you're allowed to run your generator, so it couldn't have been much. 

The camping area was beautiful and unlike anything I'd been in before.  It was a patch of open spruce forest a couple hundred yards in diameter surrounded by tundra on hilsides.  Perfect moose habitat, as we'd find later!

Sarah and I had the bed at the back of the RV, and Ed & Jeanette had the bunk over the drivers seat.  I kept looking out the back window for signs of an early showing of the northern light, but didn't see any.  We set our alarm clocks to make sure we'd wake up at 2, but when I did it was overcast, so we just went back to sleep.  I didn't want to wait outside because it was pretty cold!

It has been an incredible day and we just can't get over our luck with the weather.  We found out later that there are only a handful of days during the summer (really the year) that it is clear enough to see all of Denali like we could today.  The mountain is incredible, humbling, and awe inspring, and we never really got that close to it.