Because Denali is so awesome in every way, I'm going to start here then write just a bit at the end about our trip to Circle and from there to here.
On the way from Fairbanks to Denali, I called the reservation number for Alaskans and miracle of miracles, was able to make a reservation for the Teklanika River Campground...the reason that's such a big deal is that Park regulations allow private cars to drive only 15 miles into the Park and Teklanika is 29 miles in giving us the opportunity to stop when and where we wanted to. Part of that is good news because we saw a grizzly year old cub just on the side of the road digging up a root...what fun taking that photo was. Part of that is bad news: the weather was perfect and Denali was "out" so at one point I climbed up on top of YOW to get a better shot and coming back down missed the last step, fell on my tush then slammed my head on the pavement. Fortunately a gentleman was right there and strongly recommended an ice pack which we did as I already had a large bump developing. Long story short, I'm well past the 72 hour mark and have no symptoms so we think all is well.
On Sunday, we took a great bus trip to the end of the road, Kantishna, with many photo stops, beautiful rest stops and visitor centers along the way. The driver/guide, Kim, was outstanding in her knowledge about Denali and the wildlife. We saw grzzlies, Dall sheep, wolves, fox, ptarmigan as well as little critters. But most of all we saw the incredible, awesome beauty of Denali. We were most fortunate because Denali was with us all the way...a treat that only happens about 20% of the time! At 20,320' it rises as a huge, white (snow) massif from the valley below which is barely 3,000' so it's phenomenally huge. It's so large, so beautiful that the rest of the mountains seem quite ordinary while in other settings they too would be considered specially beautiful. Everywhere the mountains are set off by braided rivers, rushing streams and the fall colors. Without doubt, this is the most beauriful place we've ever seen, a place everyone should see at least once in his/her lifetime.
Monday we generally putzed in YOW and walked around the campground. One of the strange and wonderful things about Denali is that visitors are encouraged to walk everywhere and anywhere even without trails. We found some great "trails" (human or animal who knows) behind our campsite that led to the Teklanika River then along it to a high rock bluff that looked out on hundreds of miles of wilderness. That's not an exaggeration...Denali is larger than Massachusetts and has just one 90-mile long road! To the west of te Park boundary there's 600+ miles of wilderness before one reaches the Bering Sea! Today we've continued the putzing and are now camped at the Riley Creek Campground...huge but it has a laundry which we need!
So, back to leaving Olnes Pond and turning onto the Steece Highway that leads east from Fairbanks to Circle, a small native town on the Yukon River. We never made Circle as we had such a great campsite in the Upper Chatanika River State Recreation Site where we stayed two nights. This is another great campground that's "open" but charges no fee because there are no services...a budgetary problem. We did explore some 20 miles east of there...beautiful but a bit boring. I guess we're just spoiled!
The drive from Fairbanks towards Denali was so beautiful, most of it overlooking the Tenana River Valley that we'd seen on the drive from Moon Lake CG to Fairbanks. Since we didn't have reservations in Denali until Saturday, we spent Friday night at the Taklinika Trading Post RV Park along the Nenama River...a great camping site plus they ha a great shower and an organic CSA garden that was really outstanding. We'd stopped at the little river town of Nenama along the way for lunch and a walk through the historic river town (where the Nenama and Nanama Rivers join). Luckily we found the Old Saw Shop where George, the proprietor, knew exactly what was wrong with our chain saw...we'd kept it in a black plastic garbage bag which resulted in condensation that got into the engine. He cleaned and dried everything so now it's in gerat conditionn (we'd discovered it wasn't working when we tried to cut some firewood on our drive up the Steece Highway).
As a general comment: throughout the trip, we've had great weather, lots of sunshine, very few bugs (including mosquitoes), roads have been excellent, there aren't many competing campers so we've had great campsites. This is very different from what we'd heard.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment