Anchorage

So far we like Anchorage. It has a nicer downtown area than Portland. And great microbrews. The state of Alaska has 24 breweries, putting it in the top tier nationally for breweries per capita. Anchorage has 135 miles of paved trails for your biking pleasure, and another 300 miles of unpaved/wilderness trails for you hikers out there. There's fishing in Ship Creek right in town, literally.

It's possible you could run across a mosquito, but we haven't yet. The warning signs are there though.

Today was our work day, shopping, laundry, quaffing ale. Tomorrow we get to play, and if the weather is nice, we'll even go for a bike ride. Woohoo!!

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Talkeetna

Remember the tv show called "Northern Exposure"? We loved that show. Talkeetna is the town that show was modeled after. Lots of gifts shops, one coffee house, and one microbrew. So we were both happy today.

We drove in the rain all day today. Unfortunately my trailer has a leak at the very front. Whenever we drive in the rain the bed gets wet. For the life of me I can't find where it's coming from. I've caulked extensively around everything I can think of but I'm not done yet apparently.

The drive was pretty uneventful except for a cow moose ran across the road right in front of us. I hit the brakes pretty hard as I watched her look over her shoulder at us, and thank goodness she had some speed, because I couldn't have stopped on that wet road. Tomorrow we drive through an area the Milepost calls a "moose danger zone". I'll keep my eyes peeled there for sure.

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Hiking Denali

The last two days we've been hiking the trails. Boy, these are the best trails we've ever seen. They're well marked, wide, and easily traversed. Most of the time we're in forested area, so Sue is nervous a bear will be around the corner. We sure see a lot of moose tracks on the trail, but have never spotted any wildlife on the trails. I saw a funny looking caribou at a pullover.

 We saw three different beaver dams at Horseshoe, which was kinda cool. Those beavers are very industrious. Sue did a little fishing at Horseshoe lake. Nibbles, but nothing hooked.

We saw a demonstration of the sled dogs today. They have quite a few, 50 maybe. They're very sweet and well behaved. They are also quite large, but surprisingly they only weigh 60-80 lbs. During the winter they are working animals and run approximately 3000 miles in a season. They're favorite climate is cold; 20 below 0 is where they work best. Sue tried to get a picture of them pulling the sled, but they were moving too fast for a good shot.

Tomorrow we head out of the park to Talkeetna, and then down to Anchorage. If one of us is attacked again, you'll be the first to know.

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ATTACK!

You never think it's going to happen to you. It's always someone else who made a dumb mistake. We know the rules and obey them all: Make noise on the trail so you don't startle a wild animal, hike with your head up and look around you at all times, carry your bear spray for worst case scenarios. And then all hell breaks loose.

Here's the scene. We hiked 2.5 miles to the top of a peak to get a great view, which we surely did. Those triangular looking clouds on the horizon are actually Denali.

The wind was blowing 30-40 mph up at the top, so we were hiding behind a natural wind barrier of some big rocks, eating lunch. Granted, we couldn't hear anything except the howling wind. Susie was joking how it'd be funny if a grizzly poked it's head over the rocks and looked at us.

 Out of nowhere it comes running at us! He actually started chewing on my boot! And the claws on this thing! OMG!! Our first, and hopefully last, close encounter with the wildlife. I knew JSL wouldn't be a believer without proof, so I whipped out my camera and got a quick shot. My hands were shaking so much I'm surprised it's in focus.

We quickly hightailed it down the trail before he brought over his buddies and overpowered us. What a day!!

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A Wild Ride

In as much as we saw many animals today on our tour bus trip. Let's start at the begining. We were driving out of the campground on our way to the bus when we saw the Loose Moose. She's been hanging around for a while scaring the rangers because she's a little aggresive. She kicked a lady in the head and the lady lost an ear in the incident. I'm guessing she got too close. Here she is laying in the brush.

Once we got on the bus, the first thing we saw was a momma moose with her calf. She was walking down the middle of the road, and my picture is out the front window of the bus.

We saw a number of birds which we did not get any pictures of; Willow Ptarmigan, golden eagles, arctic falcon.There were a number of birders in our bus, so they really went wild. Apparently the falcon is rarely seen. We saw a herd of thirteen Dahl Sheep, but the picture is not that good since they were way, way far away on the mountain. Plus they were moving around a lot.

From there to the Eielson Visitor center at mile 65.9, we didn't see much more wildlife.:-(. The weather was not really in our favor either. We did get a glimpse of Denali through the clouds, but if you didn't know what you were looking at, you wouldn't know what you're looking at. This is the north peak, which is shorter than the south peak, which is 3 miles from there.

We took a short hike while at the visitor center. It was really windy and cold, so we called it our popsicle hike. It was climbing the whole way though so we got a little workout.

We hopped onto another bus for the trip back. We didn't ride the same bus line as Marsha did, no tv or boxed lunch. We rode the shuttle bus, which runs every 30 minutes, and you can get off and on whenever you want. So, we're driving back when we ran into a grizzly walking down the road. It's important to note there are about 350 grizzly bears in a park of 6,000,000 acres. The chances of seeing one are slim at best. This guy wouldn't get off the road, and the bus is not supposed to pass until they are off the road. So we followed him for a while. Once he did get off, it was to grap a ground squirrel, so of course we couldn't leave then either.

We finally got to see some caribou up close too.

WOW! We finally got back and were so excited we had the chance to see so much wildlife. As we were driving back to camp, we found Loose Moose again. She loves our campground.

After a day like today, we opened one of our two remaining LouieD's. What a day!!

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Lazy Day

Today we spent exploring the surrounding area at the entrance to the park. That includes the visitor center, the railroad depot, hiking a local trail; plus we drove into the shopping area outside the park. We bought lots of gifts (which we've been doing all along), had lunch at the 49th State Brewery, and coffee at the Black Bear Coffee shop. They had more brews to select from then we've ever seen at any other brewery, and the food was not only fantastic but not your typical brewpub fare. We were so impressed we may go back. Clouds and rain all day today, but we better get used to that.

Tomorrow we take the bus ride into the park. Unlike most national parks, driving is resticted here. The road is open to the public for 13 miles; after that you have to take a tour bus. The road is actually 92.4 miles long. We'll be going in to mile 65.9. That's a total of 8 hrs on the bus plus time to get off and explore. It'll be a full day, but we should have animal pictures when we return. If we're lucky we might see the peak again.

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Denali!!

OK, I know JSL will be making some comment, so let me cut him off at the pass. This is our first view of the mountain, as we were just leaving Fairbanks, which makes it some 158 miles away. So it's a ways off, but the thing is, there's only a 25% chance of seeing the darn thing on your trip here. It's so big it creates it's own weather patterns, and it's often in the clouds. We're hoping to see it again, but it's forecast for rain the next three days, and who knows? There are only two view points of the peak in the park, unless of course you go backpacking, which we won't be doing. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

If you're confused about the name, let me try to clarify it for you. Thousands of years ago the native Athabascans named this mountain Denali, which means "The High One", which at 20,237', was a pretty savvy move. Then along came some white guys in 1896 who 'discovered' it and claimed the name McKinley, who was then running for president. In 1917 it officially became the McKinley National Park. Alaska changed the name back to Denali, which is how all the locals refer to it, but the Ohio congressmen (who's district include McKinleys home town) won't let  congress allow Alaska to name their mountain. I will be using the Denali moniker.

We'll be here for the next six days, hiking, biking, fishing. And of course we have to check out the 49th State Brewery. So, more news as it's created. Stay tuned.

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