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Anchorage I

9/13/2023

The next morning we took a hike to the south end of Byers Lake. We had seen signs that the bridge was out at the south end, so had gone north the previous day, but we decided to take a look at the broken bridge. The bridge was just that, a broken bridge, but the hike down that side of the lake was beautiful. We got back to the campground and packed up, and headed for Anchorage to visit Wayne and Marilyn. We were really excited to talk to them, since most of what we had done so far in Alaska was at their recommendation, and they had given us all sorts of local insights about what to expect, all of which had been spot on. We ended up laughing when we got there because while we were trying to tell them how excited we were at all we’ve seen, they were trying to tell us how excited they were about us being the first Belize friends to visit them in Alaska!

We had planned to just spend the night with them and move on, but we were having so much fun visiting that we ended up spending a couple of days with them. Both are accomplished birders, so we spent most of the next day birding in Anchorage. While that sounds like urban birding, it isn’t. We were in forests and wetlands and mudflats and riverbeds, all of which were teeming with wildlife. We also went to the airport, where we enjoyed watching the sea planes take off and land. We found that their city neighborhood connects to an extensive bike and hike trail which runs all through the city, although you would swear you were on a walk in a countryside park. Wayne took Tom to their local bike shop where they fixed Tom’s bike, and helped us get a couple of other city type errands done. We finally decided that we had to leave and head for Homer since the friend we were visiting there was going away at the end of then next week, but we left with promises to return.

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Denali NP to Anchorage

9/13/2023

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Monday morning, we gave Jim and Tracy, the e-bike loaners, a tour of the camper before we pulled out of Teklanika, and then took our time getting back to Savage River. Thanks to Princha, we saw a caribou trotting through the bush, and we also got a lucky view of Denali as the clouds cleared. At Savage River, we hiked the Savage River trail, and then headed to the visitor center where we hiked the 4 mile Horseshoe Lake Loop. We used the park dump station to dump our gray water and fill with fresh water, and then headed south on Hwy. 3, where, thanks to iOverlander, we found a free campground behind a rest area at mile 185.5. It’s a cool thing that more states should do; the rest area has pit toilets, plenty of parking, and an 8-hour limit sign. But, on a loop behind the rest area, they have paved campsites with picnic tables and fire rings, as well as another pit toilet and garbage collection. Only 4 of 10 sites were occupied that night, so while people seem to know about the facility, it isn’t over used or abused. We could hear the highway, but couldn’t see anything other than forest and mountains. It certainly wasn’t a pleasantly remote campground like Teklanika, but for a free place to pull over for the night and sleep between the “real” stops, it was great.

The next morning, we had stunningly clear views of Denali as we drove south on Rt. 3. We decided to stop at Byers Lake, which Wayne and Marilyn had recommended, and hoped to hike to the other side of the lake from the campground to see the view of Denali. We pulled into the almost empty campground before 1pm, parked, had lunch, and walked around to the other side of the lake in hopes of another Denali view but the clouds had rolled in and it had disappeared. We later realized how lucky we were to have seen the view we did, when we talked to a bunch of other people who hadn’t been so lucky. Despite not getting another view of the mountain, we saw bear poop on the trail, and crossed a bridge over a creek teeming with salmon, which was our first glimpse of spawning season. A few more campers pulled in late in the day, but the campground remained very empty.

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Denali National Park

9/13/2023

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We drove off the Denali Highway and went to a super nice grocery store in Healy, which was completely unexpected. We didn’t expect a tourist town in Alaska to have a grocery store with fresh wild caught salmon, and good fairly reasonably priced fresh produce, but they did. After stocking up, we drove into Denali National Park and checked into Riley Creek Campground to get the paperwork to head to Teklanika. We had made reservations for three nights at the Teklanika Campground, which we were only able to do because our friend Wayne Hall in Anchorage not only recommended it, but also lurked on line until he found a window with reservations and immediately contacted us to make them. Teklanika is special, and we didn’t even realize how special until we got there. Like the other national parks, Denali is trying to continue to keep the park accessible without having it overrun with tourists, and without having the traffic impact the wildlife and the environment. Part of the effort to do this is to close the road to the public at Savage River, which is only about 15 miles into the park. After Savage River, the only vehicles allowed on the park road are the park buses…and cars and campers going to Teklanika for a minimum three night stay. Those going to Teklanika get a lecture on the rules for driving the road, which are basically to take your time, but go directly to the campground, where you must stay until the day you check out, when you must drive directly back to Savage River.

The park has devised a system where they have a combination of transit buses to move people from point to point in the park after Savage River, and tour buses, which take people to the end of the road with frequent stops to see wildlife. They suggest that people who camp at Teklanika get transit bus permits to get around in the park after the campground, but we elected not to do that, although the park personnel asked us repeatedly if we were sure. The problem for us was that the transit bus tickets were over $30/person/day. Normally, the park road runs all the way out to the Eielson visitor center and Wonder Lake, but because of a landslide that closed the road, the buses only go about 15 miles beyond Teklanika. If we had had the option to go another 60 miles beyond Teklanika, we would have undoubtedly opted to get transit tickets for at least one of the days we were there, but for 15 miles, we decided that we would just ride our e-bikes as far as we could go. We talked to lots of other campers and found that we were definitely in the minority.

After getting our first lecture at the Riley Creek Campground and being quizzed to make sure we understood the rules, we headed for Savage River and did a great hike. We then went through the last check point and got another extensive briefing by a ranger, and drove the last 15 miles to the campground where we had to stay parked until Monday morning.

We saw our first grizzly with Saturday morning breakfast in the campground. Someone walking his big dog went by the campsite and we heard him say there was a grizzly on the trail. We stayed put, then heard our across the road tent camping neighbors yelling “go away bear,” so we went out to make the group bigger and make more noise. The bear was standing at the edge of the clearing, not more than 20 feet away, trying to decide if it should join them for breakfast. When all the campers in the area showed up and started yelling, he turned around and wandered away, stopping for a roll in the grass. Part of the ranger’s briefing had been how to react at bear encounters, and we were glad that not only had we listened, but all of the other campers in our area had listened as well.

The rest of Saturday was not too exciting. We took a nice walk west to the bridge over the river, which was about 2 1/2 miles, and then turned around and came back and cut down to the river to walk along the wash back to the campground. After lunch, we got on our e-bikes to head towards the end of the road. We peddled uphill for about 10 miles and right before the crest of the hill in Sable Pass, Tom’s bike started making a funny noise and his chain was off. But it wasn’t just the chain. The whole sprocket was broken. Fortunately the first 10 miles had been uphill and we hadn’t started down the other side yet so we were able to coast back with only some pushing and skating by Tom on the broken bike. Somehow, we made it back almost as quickly as we made it out.

Sunday was much more fun. Some fellow campers offered Tom the loan of an E-bike so we could do the ride on Sunday that we had intended to do on Saturday. It was a great ride and we made it almost to the end, when we were turned around by a ranger because there was a bear in the road which we only saw from a distance. We rode back through the pass, and were about halfway down the first long hill when we saw a ranger truck parked by the side of the road. We stopped and realized she was looking at a mother grizzly with 3 cubs. We watched them amble along the mountainside for a while, until they went over the crest of a hill and we couldn’t see them. We also saw a bunch of marmots, and were somewhat shocked to find out that they were carnivorous, since one was eating a dead bird, and another was chewing on another dead marmot’s skin. Most importantly, we made it back to the campground with no broken bikes or other disasters. When we got back to the campground we talked to fellow campers, and we realized that one of the magical things about Denali is that no matter what your interests or abilities, you can have an adventure. We had an adventure because we were turned back less than a mile from our goal because we couldn’t get any closer to a bear on our bikes. The people on the bus by the bear were having an adventure because they were face to face with the bear. Some other campers were hiking over a bridge, and realized a mama bear and a couple of cubs were right under the bridge. Another group we talked to had been out in the back country climbing a mountain, when they realized a bear was immediately below them in a ravine. And that’s just the bear adventures!

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Denali Highway, Cantwell to Paxson and back

9/13/2023

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When we finally got all of our stuff done in smoky Fairbanks, we hit the road. We ran through even heavier smoke on the way to Denali, but most of the smoke had cleared by the time we got to the park entrance. Because we couldn’t get a campground reservation in the park until Friday, our plan was to drive the Denali Highway in both directions and boondock there for the three nights before we could get into Denali NP, but since we were driving right by Denali we decided to check out the visitor center while we had time. We asked rangers a couple of questions we had about our upcoming camping reservation, and then hiked about 2.5 miles to the sled dog kennels, where our timing was perfect to see the sled dog demo and meet some of the dogs. We hiked back to the visitor center and took our dogs for a short walk around the area, then stopped at the camp office for one more question, then drove to Cantwell to pick up the Denali Hwy. The first “free” campsite listed on iOverlander turned out to have a $30 fee attached, so we continued east to the next pullout at MP125, which had multiple fire rings and plenty of space to get off the road. One truck camper was already there, but we were able to park down the hill so we don’t *think* we were in his space…and we had our own fire ring which we did’t use.

We spent the whole next day driving through rain and fog on the Denali Highway. We saw two moose, and limited scenery. It finally stopped raining as we neared the end, so we stopped at the lake at Mile 7 and had a gorgeous campsite all to ourselves. We took a walk around the lake, and went inside for dinner. After dinner, we took the dogs out for last time and found that the clouds had cleared and we discovered that we were surrounded by snow covered mountains and glaciers. It was a wonderful surprise!

In the morning, after taking yet more photos of the mountains and glaciers surrounding 7 Mile Lake, we drove the last seven miles of the Denali Highway to Paxson, which appears to be a ghost town. We turned around and headed back east, marveling at the different amazing views around every curve in the road. We knew we were missing pretty scenery the day before, but the beauty was an order of magnitude higher than what we had expected. After a week in Alaska, we’d been a little unimpressed after the beauty of Canada, mostly due to bad roads and the fact that we couldn’t see much thanks to either smoke or clouds and fog. When the rain and fog cleared and took the smoke with it, and we were driving on the generally well maintained Denali Highway, we finally realized that Alaska actually does live up to the hype. We stopped at lots of pull offs for photos, and we stopped for the night at a pull off very near the Brushkana Campground because we saw a hiking trail on the map. The trail was beautiful, winding through meadows and pine forests to the creek. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we saw plenty of animal tracks and a beautiful view no matter which way we looked.

The next morning, we only had about 30 miles back out to Rt. 2, where we would head into Denali to camp at the Teklanika Campground for three nights.

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Fairbanks, AK

9/13/2023

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We took a walk around the BLM campground, then got on the Taylor/Top of the World Highway and headed towards Fairbanks. We found that we prefer Canada’s well maintained dirt roads to the Alaska frost heaved paved roads, and that we make much better time on the dirt. Nonetheless, we got out to the Alaska Highway, stopped for fuel and to collect email and messages in Tok, and then headed for Fairbanks with a lunch stop and a short hike at Lisa Lake. When we got to Fairbanks, we immediately went to Giant Tire where we got a good deal on VERY lightly used Firestone tires, and scheduled to have them put on the truck the next morning. We stayed in the grass overflow parking at the Carlson Center, and took advantage of the walking trail that runs along the river.

The next day, Saturday, didn’t go exactly as planned. We got to Giant Tire and they were putting on the tires when I got a horrible pain in my back and hip, to the point where I almost passed out and ended up sitting in the middle of the parking lot with my head between my knees trying not to vomit. Since our plan for after Fairbanks was to head into Denali National Park for three nights, which is very remote and doesn’t have any communications, we decided to take me to the Fairbanks hospital ER to get checked out. They did an EKG and blood and urine tests to rule out heart problems or kidney stones, and then decided that I had just had the mother of all muscle cramps due to dehydration, and gave me a bag of fluids and sent me on my way when I was feeling better, with the assurance from the doctor that he saw no reason why I should die if I went remote for a few days.

Fairbanks is full of all sorts of art.

Because we’d spent the whole afternoon in the ER, we didn’t do any of the other things we had planned to do, and the next day was Sunday and nothing was open, so we spent another two nights at the Carlson Center. On Sunday we hiked all over Fairbanks, which is a pretty little city. On Monday, Jiffy Lube and a hairdresser were opened, so we had the truck’s oil changed and got haircuts. We had good cell reception, so we used the downtime to get caught up on some computer stuff. While Fairbanks became a little more complicated than we’d planned, we were happy to get great deals on tires and dog food.

By the time we left Fairbanks, everything was smoky.

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Anchorage I

Denali NP to Anchorage

Denali National Park

Denali Highway, Cantwell to Paxson and back

Fairbanks, AK

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