The Wet Wilderness

We have spent seven days in and around Denali National Park and haven’t seen Mt. McKinley once.  The sun has come out for short times only occasionally.  The past two days have been steady rain.  And the forecast is for rain the next seven days. A ranger we spoke to said that July is their rainiest month and this year has been extra heavy. Sigh…..

Despite that, we have been having a great time. We spent three nights deep inside Denali at Teklanika Campground at Mile 29.  Without a permit, you are allowed only 15 miles into the park.  I got reservations over 8 months ago, so we got past “Checkpoint Charlie”, where the ranger verifies you have reservations for Teklanika. Once you drive out to the campground, you are not allowed to use your vehicle.  We took walks around the campground area and went to a couple ranger talks.

Headed out to Teklanika campground. The road is all gravel with plenty of mud.

A mom moose and her calf.
They were so busy eating the tasty bushes and trees, they didn't seem to mind the bus and cars that had stopped to watch.

 

Had a very nice campsite with lots of trees (and mosquitoes).

The amount of mud on the van and trailer was unbelievable! The exhaust pipe got completely closed up with the stuff.

The Teklanika river is right next to the campground. This is called a braid river since it doesn't have a main channel and what channels it does have can change over the course of several days.

There were Dall sheep grazing on the mountain just across the river from our campsite. 
Pretty fuzzy because it was a ways away.

We took a couple walks along the Park Road. Just after I took this picture, a bus driver stopped to tell us that they had just spotted a bear that had crossed the river and was heading our direction.  We decided to cut short our walk that day and hightailed it back to the campsite.

Toured the Visitor Center after our camping adventure and walked some of the local small trails.

A giant relief map of the park.  You can see where Teklanika is relative to Mt. McKinley.

Explored some of the local area around the National Park.  Healy is the closest “town” north of the Park entrance. It is a loosely coupled set of homesteads with a school but no business section.  Tried to find a grocery store but the closest thing was a 7-Eleven type market at a gas station.

Drove about 8 miles down Stampede Road.  If you have read “Into the Wild” or seen the movie, this is the road down which the bus Christopher McCandless lived and died in is located.  We were nowhere close to the bus – you have to ford at least one river to get to it and the road was rough enough where we stopped. But you can get a sense of the total isolation. We saw berry pickers and a moose and that was about it for life.

Stampede Road.  This was originally a trail used by gold stampeders in the early 1900s to get out to their claims.

A view from Stampede Road back out to Parks Highway. Lots of berry bushes in this area.

Drove back to the Park Entrance and back down the Park Road to Savage River.  This is 15 miles into the park and the turning around point for private vehicles unless you have a permit. Decided against taking a tour bus which will get you deeper into the park.  These are basically school busses and they aren’t that comfortable.  People we spoke to said they saw a little wildlife, but we decided that it wasn’t worth the several hour drive to maybe see a little wildlife. And with the weather being what it is, we sure weren’t going to see Mt. McKinley.

McKinley is supposed to be in this picture.  Just imagine it behind the clouds.

Savage River.

A Ptarmigan, the state bird.  Looks like a grouse and tastes like a chicken.

A male caribou.  Huge antlers!

A view of mountains in Denali National Park.

The berries are starting to show up everywhere. 

Yesterday we left the Park entrance area and meandered down south towards Anchorage. We are spending two days in Talkeetna and exploring the south end of the Denali area. 

Our campground is just outside Talkeetna and backs up to train tracks.  We were awakened this morning by the Alaska Railroad train that goes from Anchorage to Fairbanks.  Talkeetna is a stop for cruise ship passengers, amongst others, on their way to Denali.  I wondered why all the Princess busses were driving into town.

Had breakfast at the Talkeetna Roadhouse, established in 1944.  Had the best homefries – just like my mom used to make.  Russ had a huge pancake – it hung off his plate a good two inches all around.  Drove around the area a bit, trying to stay dry.  Took the Petersville road (gravel most of the way) 18 miles out to another roadhouse.  Passed some beautiful meadows and crossed over some nice streams and rivers.  This road was homesteaded in waves starting around the turn of the century and continuing up through the 1970’s. If you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle you can drive an additional 20 miles past the roadhouse to a recreational mining area where you are free to pan for gold.

Another view of Mt. McKinley - just pretend the clouds aren't there.

This roadhouse was built to serve the gold miners in the local area around Petersville Road. 
Today it serves campers, hunters and snowmobilers.

Hopefully it won’t be so rainy tomorrow and we can walk around the town a bit.  We will leave the area Thursday and head down closer to Anchorage.  Need to get some maintenance done on the van before we go down to the Kenai Peninsula. The next few weeks will be spent in the land of ocean glaciers, orcas and sea otters.