Road Trip

 Took a few days and went up to Denali National Park.

The mountain was visible all day!    I have never ever seen that before.   She is so elusive, and makes her own weather, that she is usually cloaked in clouds.

Half staff in honor of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Denali Swag

(Note:   I am either going to have to pause the adventures for a while or plan on catching up on posts this coming winter.   Home again after the latest, here we go--a wonderful trip to Denali National Park.)

A short drive north of the entrance to Denali National Park (nee Mt. McKinley National Park), is a mile-long stretch of commercial businesses known, not so affectionately, as Glitter Gulch.    

Entering Glitter Gulch.    The Salmon Bake, on the center right, was closed.   Darn it.

A part of the trinket shops.

Some of the mega-hotels.

More of the mega-hotels.   All were closed for the season..

Many Alaskans are appalled at the collection of trinket and kitsch shops on one side of the highway and mega-hotels catering to cruise ship passengers and tour operators.   In all fairness, though, there are some shops that offer quality products made in Alaska, as well as Alaskan art.

Some of the businesses were already closed and boarded up for the winter, because even the park itself closes the day after the final lottery drive on Tuesday.   But, it doesn’t matter when you drive through this area, either at the beginning, mid, or end of their short summer season, you can always see signs promising slashed prices in the trinket shops.

Note the bright yellow "50 % off polar fleece" sign.

I was gifted a permit for the annual Denali road lottery, one of five days in which private vehicles are allowed on the park road past Mile 14.    Four hundred vehicles a day travel as far as Kantishna, at Mile 92, driving slowly to spot animals, admire the scenery, and hopefully see Denali itself.

My permit was for Tuesday, the final day.   I arrived in Glitter Gulch late afternoon Sunday, checked into the RV park that’s right behind the shops, and went to see what bargains the purveyors of Made in China souvenirs had waiting for me.

  My first purchase, which I absolutely didn’t need but wanted anyway, was a hand sewn backpack, marked down to $20 from $39.99.   I’m not sure, but I think it was made by the owner’s wife.

One main compartment, one smaller in the front, and a pocket on each side.

Waterproof inside.

I then proceeded to visit all the other shops that were still open, filling my new backpack exponentially and refusing all offers of plastic bags in favor of my new, reusable, handmade pack.

Here are some pitiful photos of my purchases:

A notebook for $1.50.   This came in handy.

Known by various names, such as buffs, bandeaus, bandanas, etc., I was introduced to these hand things in Africa by my traveling companions.      You can see below how useful they are.

This one was the real bargain.   Marked way high, the 40 per cent off in the Park gift shop--with many items branded by National Geographic, this buff features a map of the Aaska Range with Denali and its near mountains featured.  It was only $12.99.    I was also able to replace my Armstrong's Bird of Alaska book, which was falling apart, for $12.99 instead of the marked price of $29.99.

As you can see, their uses are varied.   Myself, I find them perfect for disguising neck wattles.

This lovely handmade, sand-carved cup was a quality purchase.

This fleece throw featuring a photo of the mountain itself, was marked down to $7.99, and is perfect for the RV.

I have noticed in the last couple years that my apparel choices run heavily to designs in Real Tree camouflage.     I acquired this taste while preparing for a trip to my cousins' elk hunting camp in Wyoming, and after attending Jamin Hunter Taylor's Birding Boot Camp. Therefore, this zip-up hoodie in lightweight fabric, gray with light blue, was an unusual choice.   I liked it so much, I went back and got another in green and gray.  These were marked down to $20.00 from $54.99, which puts them right in line with what they should cost.

 

And finally, a black cap with colorful embroidery.

The Nice Day for a Drive Journals, Ch. 2

Here are two things about Alaska you should know:

1.       There aren’t many roads, and ,

2.      You don’t have to go far to find mountains.

My road trip used three of those highways—the Seward, Glenn, and Parks highways, beginning near Moose Pass, which is inland from the coastal city of Seward.

As for mountains, they’re all over the place, thanks to tectonic upheavals., which provide us with our entertaining earthquakes (and some not so entertaining).


I passed through the Kenai mountains (11 below) to Turnagain Arm, then alongside the Chugach mountains (12) that ring Anchorage.  Once north of Anchorage, I skirted the Talkeetna mountains (8) and reached the impressive Alaska Range (7), a 400-mile long fairly narrow strip of mountains that arc east-west.



 

 1. Brooks Range •                                                    

 2. Seward Peninsula mountains • 

 3. Nulato Hills • 

 4. Yukon-Tanana Uplands • 

 5. Ogilvie Mountians • 

 6. Kuskokwim Mountains • 

 7. Alaska Range • 

 8. Talkeetna Mountains • 

 9. Wrangell Mountains • 

10. Aleutian Range • 

11. Kenai Mountains • 

12. Chugach Mountains • 

13. St. Elias Mountains • 

14. Coast Mountains

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Before I entered the Alaska Range, though, I parked on the side of the road against a snow berm at a scenic viewpoint that was not plowed but had a hard-packed trail through the snow to the overlook.   This sight of the mouontain in the clear is not common because the mass of Denali (known to some in Ohio as Mt. McKinley, after the former president of the U.S.) is large enough to create its own localized weather and it is frequently obscured by clouds.

But, on a day like this, it’s pretty impressive.

Denali is the native Athabaskan name for the massif, translating as The High One or the preferred Great One.  At 20,320 feet, it is the highest mountain in North America.   It’s neighbor, Mt. Foraker, ranks sixth in tallest North American mountains.  In fact, of the twenty tallest mountains in North America, nine of them are in Alaska.

Denali's neighbors to the west.

With some clever reckoning and reasoning, Alaskans like to aver that Denali is higher than Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on earth.  To substantiate that claim, they say that Denali’s base is at the 2000-foot level, while Everest’s is on the 17,000-foot Tibetan plateau, thus Denali has more exposure.

 A gold miner named it McKinley in support of a then-campaigning William McKinley.  

Many attempts to revert the name of our mountain to Denali have been made.   The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name back to the original Denali, but Congressmen from McKinley’s home state of Ohio  constantly challenge efforts to have the United States Board on Geographical Names do likewise.   So, take your pick.

Pablo appreciating the view in summer from his travel cage.

Denali at the same viewpoint in summer.

Whatever name you opt for, Denali grows a millimeter a year, thanks again to those tectonic plates.   Perhaps with global climate change and the melting of the five large glaciers on the mountain, it will grow even faster as the heavily-weighted land mass springs upward.  Maybe.

Denali National Park and Preserve is closed to traffic in the winter.  During the summer months, the only access for tourists is by park buses,  and they stop wherever wildlife is spotted.

Another great way to see Denali is by a flightseeing trip chartered in Talkeetna.

 

Some more photos I took during and autumn trip into Denali:

Yes, this is the "two-lane" gravel road through the park.  Not to worry about driving it as most likely some college kid will be the driver.

Late in the afternoon, she appeared.  This is from the north side.

From the front seat in the bus.

Everything in the park is scenic.

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Alaska's highways, such as they are.

The Denali View South Wayside, the first notation above Trapper Creek, is where most of these photos were taken.

This NASA composite photos shows how sparsely Alaska is populated.   The largest lighted area atthe top is Prudhoe Bay, the massive oil fields.  The larger area down from that is Fairbanks with its adjoining military bases and the city of North Pole, where Santa lives.  The two double white spots are towns in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (Palmer, Wasilla, Willow, Houston, etc).  Anchorage is the triangular shaped piece, right above the Kenai Peninsula, where my journey originated.  All the light blue areas are snow-covered mountain ranges.

Now, onward to Hurricane Gulch and some memories from 1964.