Denali National Park!!  So beautiful here in Alaska...June 26-27 Thur-Friday

Can't believe the beauty that surrounds us with mountains on all sides, wildlife yet to be seen and history to know more about in this land. 
Arriving here on Thursday, we really were watching the weather as clouds and rain have plagued  the last 2 weeks.  The rain is always needed and really makes the creeks into rushing rivers, but the cold is more than this Texas gal is liking.  I only want to stay in the RV and sew on those days.  The History of the park, when it was established in 1917, was just to protect the Dall Sheep. (which we never saw this week!) Mount McKinley or "Denali" as it is called here, is 20, 320 ft high.  Actually taller than Mt Everest, but Mt Everest starts higher in altitude than Mt McKinley.  I found this fact interesting, may have to add this my trivia facts.  The Athabascan Indians called the mountain, "Denali, "the HighOne." Lots of claims to have climbed the North and South summits, but the first ascent of the true summit was June 1913 by a Rev Stuck, H. Karstens & R. Tatum. Harper was a Native Athabascan, and was the  1st person to set foot on the higher south peak.  Karstens became the 1st superintendent of the NP. 
   Ok, enough for history, on to the tour of the park!!  Since the rain followed us, Friday, we decided to just drive the first 15 miles, which is all you can drive in private vehicles and see the Sled Dog Demos.  I love the dogs!! We did see this Ptarmigian bird crossing the road, Alaskan state bird.  They think they are still camouflaged and walk EXTREMELY slowly across the road, one agonizing step at a time.  Lots of cars waiting on him.   
 

 The dogs were so eager to have people pet and love on them, this group of pups are very playful with each other, showing a little bit of dominance over each other! Or is he hungry?  

They were super excited to get on the sled and get ready to pull it.  They are breed to work and love doing it. Amazing!!  With no triggers, as soon as the demo leader asked if we wanted to see them get to work, they all started out of doghouses, jumped up and started howling to get to work!!  What a display

And at the end, they all had treats that were buried under the gravel that as they stopped, each one knew they had a treat they only had to dig for and enjoy.  Wow, a lesson we all could learn from about the pleasure of hard work.                                                

Yesterday, Saturday, the weather took a wonderful turn to sun and warmer temps, so head to the Park we did!!  Were excited to see some more wildlife in the wild!!  Here is a teaser with some Caribou that we saw. I will have to post more tomorrow when we get to Anchorage. We are heading out this am and have to get ready to hit the road!! 

Finally a Moose sighting.

June 24, Tuesday

   Our friends, Perry and Tanya are going to stay a bit longer here at the Tanana river and we are going to try to get a spot at Ft Wainwright with electric, so I can wash some more clothes!! Also want to hit a few quilt shops in Fairbanks, looking for material more relative to Alaska.

The 2 quilt shops in Fairbanks… loved the material in one, lots of bears, moose, wolves in several patterns, so I did get a bit to make a quilt that is reflective of our trip to Alaska.  I also found a wonderful applique quilt pattern to make so we can remember this trip of a lifetime! 

  Now back to the RV to clean and get it ready to head to Anchorage.  The weather is not cooperating to go to Denali, so we think we’ll just pass by and wait out the weather in Anchorage. 

 June 25, Wednesday

   Lots of rain today!! I’m not sure of this “land of the midnight sun?”  We have only seen rain!! Decided to stay in the RV the whole day...got my sewing machine out and worked on a quilt all day.  love sewing as you hear the rain on the roof. 

June 26th, Thursday
   Interesting drive down toward Denali park...This is a little shop we stopped at, Trading Post.  This pic of a Fish Wheel, lots of people fish like this in Alaska.  We haven't seen one in use, everyone is telling us, more toward the coast in Kenai Peninsula. 

 I love this "ole couple" sitting here in the Trading Post, I think they have been waiting a bit too long!! Lin says we aren't going to be close to Polar bears, so thought I would at least get a pic at a "safe" area. lol 

As we got closer to Denali, the road construction is catching up with us, while sitting here, we looked at the weather forecast and now it looks like by weekend it will be clear and sunny. 

 Decided to stop a bit north of  Denali NP and stay to see the park at least for a day or so. As we settled into the RV park, we decided to head up to the park and get our bus tickets for the trip to  Denali.  You can only drive 15 miles into the park, then you have to ride a shuttle bus the rest of the way.  The buses drive the length of the park road, you can get off and on as long as you have a ticket.  They will stop for wildlife pics, and rest breaks. But the drive is either 6 or 8 hours long depending on how far into the park you want to go.  As we drove into the park, we caught a glimpse of a moose!!  Glad I had a telescopic lens on my camera!! 

As we got to the end of the allowed road, we saw this rock...look at who is at the top!! 

leaving the park, more road construction which caused us to look over to the side and guess what!!! Yeah!! it's an official sighting of a Moose!! As I kept the long line of cars waiting for me to get the perfect pic, they also were all trying to get a pic of her. I am now very happy!! 

 

Arctic Circle Drive

June 22, Sunday

   Beautiful morning!!  The sun is shining and the clouds are missing!  We are cleaning up and closing the RV up to head north to the Arctic Circle.  Will be leaving the RV at the half way spot, then when the road turns to gravel, head north with just the truck.  Don’t want to break anything else on the RV.  (lets see our total so far is: 1 Washer-had to buy a new one, 2, Water leak under Refrig- easy fix. 3 Step broke-was pretty easy fix with bolts, 4 Furnace wires broke, new circuit board, 5 Chest Freezer plug burned up, still working to get that one fixed completely. )

   We still have this "snow" coming down and building up on the roads.  Some people call it cottonwood pollen.

 

We can see the mountains to our south as we head out of the base, the first time this week we’ve been able to see them due to all the rain. They are beautiful. 

  The Dalton Highway goes all the way from North of Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse, AK on the Artic Ocean.  We are only going to drive the first 115 miles to the Circle itself, not the whole 415 miles.  They keep telling us its 10miles of paved road, then the rest is dirt and gravel.  We’ll see!!

June 23, Monday

  Found a pretty nice turnout last evening to park for the night.  Up early this am, got the RVs all buttoned up, locked and pulled together so no one will bother them while we are gone all day.

  North to the Arctic Circle!!  The tundra is the first thing that we notice is different than the areas we have been in. We cross the Yukon River, the

Longest river in Alaska, flowing 1979 miles from Canada to the Bering Sea. 

You can see a few of the tugs here.

  

The Alaska Pipeline parallels the highway for most of the highway, but you can only see it at certain pullouts.  It goes thru a few mountains, we crossed over it a few times and then it zig-zags!!

  

Finger Mountain was interesting, at least for a photo-op, but the more interesting site was a “pile” of clothes and a bicycle in the parking lot. We walked over and the pile of clothes moved…it was a person who is biking the highway. He said for the last 8 weeks and is going back?  Not sure where back is? But he definitely had been on the road for a long time as evidenced by beard and “smell”. 

Well, we made it to the Circle and the roads were not bad at all.  Paved for about 10-12 miles, then dirt, but it was packed hard as the truckers use this route daily.  We actually drove almost 55mph the whole way.  Lots of others are getting their pics taken here.

 The interpretive panels explain the summer/fall/winter/spring movement of the earth and why the sun doesn’t set in the summer and is not visible in the winter.  Now it makes sense.  I would have read more, but the mosquitos were about to take us away.

Heading back, we stopped at the HotSpot Café, which says they have the best hamburgers in Alaska, but we had already had lunch that we brought so maybe next time.  We did look at them and they were huge! 

  Back over the Yukon River, a better pic this time of the bridge. 

The Milepost book says it is a wood-decked bridge, completed in 1975 and is 2290 ft long.  Largest privately funded construction project in US history.

We saw these antique cars lined up by the turnout on the bridge and had to snap a few.  On the way back, we saw several more on the highway going north, I guess to meet up with the others.                        All this way in Alaska, and we keep saying where is all the wildlife?  Really thought we would have seen more on the road today, but finally a black bear crossed the road in front of us.  Got a quick pic of him before he got into the woods. 

 

  We stopped at the cutest shop called Arctic Circle Trading Post. Couple owns it, Carlson’s who settled here with their 23 children!! (18 were adopted she told me)  She said, that the others were her “home-grown” and they adopted the others from people that had adopted children from overseas and then for some reason didn’t want them anymore.  How sad is that?  They have children from 6-7 different countries. One of the daughters wrote a book, “The Homestead Kid”, of course I had to have that and have her sign it for me. As we were leaving, the sign over the door says, “Not a single mosquito at Joy…they are all married with large families. ”   I can believe that!!

  We are stopped for the night just over the Tanana River.  Lots of Mosquitos!!  I think they grow them extra large here, almost able to pick us up.  

Had to get a pic of the name of this road!!  We were on Elliott Hwy and this is the cross road.  Needless to say, we didn't drive down this road.