Weekly catchup

  For the week of June 17-21, 2013

Monday we were in Fairbanks which I wrote about the gold dredge and riverboat. Tuesday we headed to Denali, short drive maybe 140 miles or so. Soo as arriving we checked in at the campground and headed for Denali National Park, the entrance was only a mile away so this was a short trip. You can only go to mile 15 in your personal vehicle on the interior park road and from there you have to take bus tours, Denali mountain or McKinnley as it is often called is not visible till you get to at least the 9 mile mark and then again around the 13. At the 9 mile mark it is quite visible and distinguishable from other mountains as it is the only completely snow covered mountain. At this point the mountain is around 130 miles away! I have to say I was not overly impressed as I thought I would be as it did not seem so huge, but still very cool to see. We went a little further and came across an RV stopped in the middle of the road and a guy on the edge taking pictures, this must be an opportunity! It was, it was a female moose only 30 feet off the road in the tundra bushes just having a little evening snack, she was not bothered by us taking pictures and went about her business, so we just took a load of pictures and headed on towards what may be waiting next which turned out to be no more animal surprises but very cool scenery in general. 

Wednesday morning is bus tour day, 66 miles back into Denali on dirt roads and some even taller and steeper than the "World Highway". The bus was loaded to capacity pretty much with perhaps 4 empty seats, the driver/ narrator told us if we saw any wildlife to holler out and give location, obviously we were all excited about seeing animals and we were barely 10 minutes in when Dale, overheating from excitement screams "MOOSE LEFT SIDE", driver comes to a halt and the bus nearly tips over on its side with all the people from the right now on the left crowding the windows like a pack of Mosquito's trying to attack you at night through the screen! People are asking "WHERE ? WHERE? And Dale with her calm quiet voice says kind of under her breath " ah, it's just a bush" people are still looking and she has to repeat herself and then the deafening sound of  disappointment and Dale is redder than a fire engine. Terry in his attempt to comfort her says " don't worry Dale in a few minutes Tab will scream out "LOOK AT THAT FUCKING MOOSE! And they'll forget all about what you said". Lol, well much to his disappointment a minute or two later I did scream out BEAR! This was a real sighting though 'sorry Dale' :). Indeed it was a mama grizzly bear with 2 cubs. She was at a distance but probably within. 150 yards. Everyone got some pictures and I suppose they did forget about Dales "Premature Speculation!

   We no sooner went a quarter mile and another grizzly appears, this one closer than the other and the driver speculated it may be the others offspring from year before. From there on for the next 60 miles it was mainly sheep, moose and a few caribou. Denali is six million acres of preserve.  The mountain at the 66 mile mark is much more impressive and we were then at about 30 miles from the mountain, this is as close as you can drive and although there were further trips going on to mile 92 they actually veered away from the mountain. This is an 8 hour trip and 7 hours and 10 minutes are spent on the bus! We were very fortunate that we saw the mountain 2 days in a row as most often it is obscured by clouds as they say the mountain makes its own weather! On approaching the Eielison point which is our turn around spot we noticed people down on the river bank and also noticed a hiker scooting across the tundra obviously unaware there was a grizzly less than 200 yards away from him. Lucky for him the grizzly wasn't on a meat diet that day :) . Trip back was uneventful except for a couple moose and caribou sightings, one caribou was right near the edge of the road laying on a patch of snow to keep cool in this unusual heat wave here in Alaska.

That evening we ate at a local fish spot that seemed popular and were quite proud of what they sold and even thought it was so good you would want to buy a sweat or tee shirt of the place! Well they were WRONG! The cod was cooked to death and nearly burnt crispy, I noticed I had busted a tooth I just had fixed before we left! Not sure it happened here but this is where I noticed it. Bad choice!  The best fish I think i ever had was back in Dawson City Yukon, it was fresh and crispy with a light batter. 

This was a mama moose and her babies we saw

The next day "Thursday" we decided we really weren't ready to leave Denali although we didnt want to take the 66 mile dirt road to hell trip again to see the mountain so we saw on the map a spot a hundred miles south of us which was called the North View Denali,  so we opted to head there and spend the night at the Denali State Park with no hookups at only $10 night even though we had already paid at the other place for the night and they wouldn't give us a refund, even after I gave them my mostly bogus story about having a dental emergency and having to head to anchorage to no advantage. Answer was still no, so I crossed the street to the local medical clinic and by chance they had some of those dental repair emergency kits. I bought all three at $11 each but worth having as we had been trying to locate some for Terry earlier with no luck. So I patched my tooth and we hooked up with Terry and Dale to go watch the dog sled demonstration before we took off. Terry and Dale were going to spend the night at the campground we were at. Just a note about the campground which we would not recommend even with the convenience of location, first the worker there was in the site next to the Paces and upon returning from the Denali trip, as they were backing in she comes over and asks them to move their rig over as she was having a birthday party and needed more parking, she obviously doesn't understand campground etiquette or how Rv's should be parked as her's was parked wrong throwing off every other site! The Paces had to go asked to be moved to another spot which they did. Now, right behind our row of Rv's are the shops and although ours was wonderful as it was an ice cream shop and you could smell the waffle cones baking the down Side was people were walking through your sight the whole time back and forth to and from stores. The next morning they had apparently went to dump grease in dumpster and spilled it all the way through Paces sight! Then shortly after we got up a semi pulls up and parks right n front of us for probably an hour and a half! Banging and making all kinds of noises delivering goods to all the shops. We couldn't have gotten out if we needed too! If you are coming to Denali this was the Denali rainbow village. We seldom complain about a campground but this whole experience was ridiculous! Hence part of our choice to move south but mainly the trip was to get to see more and a different view of the mountain. 

So here at Denali State Park at the veterans center the view of the mountain is phenomenal! Lucky enough to see it for three days an row! Plus our journey barely got started when we spotted a moose just off the road with 2 babies with her! What a great find and from there the view of Denali began changing and getting closer. As we arrived we are about 35 miles from it and the roads to here were WAY better than the park roads and we are about the same distance but with a completely different view.  We spent the night in the campground here and it was very quite and private with being in a forest. We has hoped to wake this morning and come back up front for a wonderful view of the mountain but the clouds have it completely hidden and if you were driving through with no knowledge you would never have a clue what you were missing. So we are hanging out at this veterans center waiting on terry and dale to come through and in the mean time chatting with the couple who volunteer here in the summers. Lots of interesting people coming thru telling their stories and a lady came in who lives 50 miles south of here who raises Tibetan Mastiffs, she had two of them with her with one being a pup. When I asked her how old the one was she said 7 months and I thought for sure was misspoke and meant 7 years but she didn't! This pup is probably 75-90 pounds! The lady with the camera is the supervisor for the park area but the dog lady said she is also a professional photographer and did shoots for the show "The Golden Girls"

This is Dom the 7 month old!

So we waited and Terry and Dale showed up around 11 and since the mountain was not going to be showing itself today we decided to move on to Anchorage for a couple of days. This is the largest city in Alaska at 225,000 people.