Alaska Trip 2011: June 16-17 - Denali National Park Part 1

This is page 26 of our Alaska 2011 trip journal. Click here for the first page. If you want to bookmark this journal, http://jeanne-travels.blogspot.com always links to the newest page.

After we returned from our Arctic adventure, we did mostly nothing for a couple days. Then we hitched up and headed South toward Denali National Park. We camped a few miles north of the town of Nenana, which is where people stay when they come in on tour buses or the train. It's what I call a tourist town - not much there except hotels, shops, and restaurants. You see one, you've seen 'em all.

The first order of business after we arrived was to get to the visitor center and schedule a tour bus, since the only way you can get beyond mile 15 of the park road is on a bus. We chose the tour that does the entire 92-mile length of the park. We will decide later if we want to take one of the two shorter tours, but I'm guessing not. Our tour was to be on Saturday, so we spent Friday doing some sightseeing in the front part of the park.

George Parks Highway

The road from Fairbanks to the Denali entrance is pretty, but not spectacular. We seem to be on a ridge of some kind, looking down on the valley. As you get closer to the park, you start to see the mountains in the distance.

Highway Overlook

This overlook was not actually in the park - it was along the road between there and the campground.

I had to buy a flower book to identify all the wildflowers we are seeing. The white one is Northern Oxytrope, and the pinkish one is called Eskimo Potato. Both are relatives of peas or lupines.

Savage River

We took an evening drive to the Savage River area, the farthest you can go in your own car. We were hoping to spot some wildlife. No big game, just these two Arctic Ground Squirrels. They are quite a bit larger than any ground squirrels I have ever seen, and even larger than regular squirrels. They are supposedly quite shy, but I think these two have been habituated to humans. They came up very close to us, and seemed to be begging. But I don't play that game, so I just took their picture and ignored them.

This is a really pretty area here. We'll have to think about coming back later in the week and take one of the hikes that start here.

More Views from Road

Here is the view from another overlook on the way back, including a train trestle for the Alaska Railroad. We also stopped at the overlook where you can see Mt. McKinley, but it was too cloudy up there. This is not unusual. They say only 30% of the people who come to Denali are able to see the mountain. It hides behind the clouds two days out of three..

Nature Hike

Friday we took a hike from the visitor center, led by a Ranger/Naturalist. We saw lots of wildflowers, and the ranger pointed out a few other things we might not have noticed, such as the leaf miner in the next picture. The insect lays its egg at the base of the stem, and the larva tunnels its way back and forth inside the leaf.

Some of the lupines are all purple, and some are purple and white. It's apparently a natural variation. The other picture is bluebells, which of course are easily recognizable.

This was an interesting footbridge, with great views upstream and downstream.

This clump on the black spruce is called a witch's broom. It is not a nest; it is a cancerous growth of the tree itself, triggered by a fungus. We have seen a lot of these around the state but until now, did not know what it was.

The spiny orange balls on the rose leaves are called galls. They are caused by a wasp who lays its eggs there.

This orange butterfly looks like it has lost a part of its right wing.

Last but not last, this is the same trestle that showed in the earlier picture, only this view is from the trail down below the trestle instead of the road above.

After the hike, we headed back to camp to rest up for the tour the next day. It's about a 12-hour trip, so it will be a long day.

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Alaska Trip 2011: June 13 - Arctic Adventure Last Day

This is page 25 of our Alaska 2011 trip journal. Click here for the first page. If you want to bookmark this journal, http://jeanne-travels.blogspot.com always links to the newest page.

Today we start the long journey back to Fairbanks. We are going to try to make the entire 500 miles today. Maybe we'll get there before dark. Ummm.... I think that would be about August. It's been at least 2 or 3 weeks since we have seen darkness at night. Fairbanks is south of the Arctic Circle, so the sun does go down, but it doesn't get very dark. There's just a little twilight for the hour or two that the sun dips below the horizon.

Strange Gas Station

Of course we have to fuel up before hitting the road. We located the gas station on the map, and then drove right by it, because it didn't look like a gas station. The pumps are inside a small metal shack, with tanks behind to hold the fuel. I'm guessing the above-ground tanks are to protect them from frost heave, and the little shack is to keep the pumps from freezing or getting covered by snow. You can watch the meter through the window.

On the Road Again

It's about 32° and overcast as we head south, and the clouds ahead look like snow. The area gets only about 4 inches of rain a year, most of it in the form of snow. Compare that to the Sahara Desert, which averages over 7 inches in a year. Yet the area is basically a flat wetland, with standing water everywhere. The permafrost is very close to the surface here, so when the snow melts there is basically no place for it to go.

I have two pictures of the tundra to share. One shows the frost heaves in the ground, and the other just the expanse of wetland.

Caribou Crossing

We had to wait for a herd of caribou to cross the road, and then saw more grazing just down the road.

Road Conditions

Here are two more pictures illustrating the road conditions. The first is on one of the rare sections of paved road. notice the crack across the road? Follow it down the side to see how deep it is. The other picture is after we ran into the snow. It shows what happens to the unpaved sections of road when they get wet. Needless to say, we are now collecting even deeper layers of mud.

Snowing Harder

At this point, it has started to snow harder. The mountains are still in the distance, but you can already tell there is more snow on them than there was when we came by here yesterday. The temperature is dropping, down to 30° so far, and the snow is starting to stick a little more.

Ghost Mountains

This was such a strange effect to me. The snow and fog made the mountains look shadowy, like an eerie ghost.

Atigun Pass Revisited

Atigun Pass looks a lot different than it did yesterday. It was a bit colder, too - the temperature dropped to 28° as we came across. There was no ice or snow on the road when we were here, just the mud. Later on, we did hear one trucker talk about having to chain up to cross the pass in the morning.

South of the Pass

Once we got through the pass, the weather changed just as abruptly as it did going the other way. The temperature started rising, and the snow changed to rain, and eventually cleared up. After that, it stayed dry most of the way back, until we ran into a light shower near Fairbanks

More Mud

When the snow changed to light rain, it was still making lots of fresh mud, but the rain loosened it a little at the top, causing it to run rivers of mud down the side. Yuck. And the picture does not even show how deep it is on the running boards and back bumper.

More Wildlife

We got a pretty good look at this moose. You can even see the velvet on his freshly sprouted antlers. You might have to zoom in the picture to get a better look.

We saw two different foxes, within about half an hour of each other. Believe it or not, these are red foxes. This surprised me, since they are not the normal red color, but when I looked them up to see what they were, I learned that red foxes come in about four color variations. This one is called a cross fox, because the shading on the back and shoulder resembles a cross. You can see it best in the second picture. The second fox, in the lower two pictures, was carrying some kind of prey. We did not get a good look at what it was.

Alpenglow and Rainbows

As we got back near Fairbanks, we were treated to two different visual effects - alpenglow and a rainbow. Alpenglow is what is making the green trees glow red. Has something to do with the sun being below the top of the hill, and the rays refracting or bending over the top. The sun has not really gone down yet, but depending on which direction we are pointing on this winding road, it may or may not be behind a mountain.

By the way, these pictures were taken a little after midnight, by the light of the midnight sun. We did make it back to Fairbanks before sunset, which was around 12:30.

Back in Fairbanks

Our Arctic adventure was an amazing journey - I'm really glad we decided to go ahead with it. There are so many things in this world that you think you understand, but until you experience it, you really don't understand. We could have spent more money and flown to Deadhorse, but it would not have been the same experience.

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