Day 21 - Fairbanks to the Denali and Talkeetna

Day 21 -"Blue Skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see!"

We are on the road again - this time heading down the Parks Highway from Fairbanks towards the Denali Park.  This is a very picturesque drive with lots of hills and lovely rivers and lakes.  We stopped for lunch at  the Clear Sky Lodge where indeed the skies were clear, it was very hot and the food was great.  It did not look like much from the outside but my shrimp salad was delicious.

We did not stop much along this area because our destination was The Denali Park and then Talkeetna for the night so we had some miles to make.  Late in the afternoon, with the sun shining and just some great big puffy clouds we arrived at the park.  We stopped and took the tourist shots of us in front of the Denali Park sign then dropped in to the visitor centre and gave the dog a stretch and paid our permit. You are only allowed to drive the first 15 miles of the park on your own and if you want to go further buy passage on a bus tour.  The tours are long and we did not want to leave poor Corona for 8 hours so we opted to just drive the 15 miles, see if the big mountain was going to let us take a look at her and then press on to Talkeetna where we have a flight-seeing tour booked. 

We were very blessed with great views of McKinley (Denali) Mountain.  Now, I have always thought of this mountain as McKinley because that is how it is listed on maps, but here they call it by the native name "Denali".  The Milepost gives some interesting information about this mountain ~ "First mention of 'the mountain' was in 1794 when English explorer Captain George Vancouver spotted 'a stupendous snow moutain' from Cook Inlet.  Early Russian explorers and traders called the peak "Bolshaia Gora or big mountain.   The Atahbaskan Indians of the region called it Denali ~ the high one!"  The mountain is 20, 320 ft high and when it is not cloud obscured is quite an impressive sight.

After touring through the fifteen miles of the park and ogling the beautiful sights there, we continued on the Parks Highway towards Talkeetna.  All along the way we had peek-a-boo looks at Denali and then just before we reached the Talkeetna spur road, late into the evening we were treated to beautiful sunset views of Denali and other mountains.  We were frustrated at first because there really wasn't anywhere to get a good picture but then lo and behold! we came upon a scenic pullout and wow! did we get some good shots.  Just spectacular!

We headed down the Talkeetna in almost darkness (not something we have experienced yet in Alaska).  We nervous about where we would camp as there are not many campgrounds here and the big one was full, but we found a dry camping place for $10 that had a toilet just by the railroad depot.  It is time to get some sleep because we have a flight booked for bright and early ~ sure hope the mountain is out tomorrow!