Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Day 35- In Denali

This morning, we woke up cold. The propane had run out in the night and since the temperature had dipped to about 40 degrees, well, I don’t have to draw a picture, do I? Carl threw his clothes on and changed the propane tanks about 4:00AM. Then he crawled back into bed. Later, he lit the gas stove and set a pan of water to heat for coffee and tea. It was about 6:00AM. The sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud in the bright blue sky overhead. We had our coffee, a piece of fruit and grabbed the camera. Once more we walked down to the river’s edge where I had been told there would be a view of “The Mountain”. The Alaska range was crisp in the early morning sky and I could see the top of the mountain quite clearly but that was all I could see of the 20, 320 foot massif, about the top 1,000 feet. Obviously this wasn’t going to be good enough for me. But where to go? We’re at the highest point in the park we are able to drive to. Our tundra tour is tomorrow and I can only hope for good weather two days in a row. We headed back to the camper for a proper breakfast and made plans to hike the Savage River Loop Trail, a two mile easy hike starting in a picnic area, down one side of the Savage River, across a foot bridge, and back up the other side to waiting restrooms. All that water, you know! We headed into the valley between rugged shale covered cliffs on one side and 4,000 foot mountains with grasses and shrubs on the lower slopes but giving way to barren tops further up. The walk was pleasant enough even though we were in the shadows all the way in and a good part of the way out. There was a cool breeze which aggravated an ear ache that Carl has been brewing for a couple of days. His equilibrium is off and I hope he feels better soon. The hike along the Savage River should have taken about 1 ½ hours. We did it in two because I kept stopping to take photos and look around for bear or Dall sheep we had been told might be grazing on the slopes. I’m sorry to report we didn’t see any of either animal. Once back to the truck, we broke out a bottle of water to share along with a couple of granola bars. Hey, if you’re gonna “walk healthy, you might as well eat healthy”. We decided not to go back to the camper. There is no generator time until 4 and although I can work on photos or blog entries, I only have a three hour battery. It was off to the Visitor Center where we watched an 18 minute movie on the seasonal cycle of Denali and how life has to adapt. We ate lunch at The Morino Grill with the plan to catch the 2:00 sled dog demonstration. However, Carl was looking as if he felt even worse so I made the recommendation to catch the sled dog demo on Friday. We got home, I set to editing two days worth of photos and Carl went to sleep for three hours. Now, it’s generator time and ours still isn’t running right even after spending $123.00 at the Outpost in Fairbanks. My former boss, Val Poulsen would have called them “nothing but parts changers”. They only fixed what was obvious to them, cleaned a spark arrestor, changed a spark plug and put fresh gas in it. They never put a load on it, just sent us on our way. There’s another ranger talk tonight on the geology of Denali. We’re headed there in a bit. Tomorrow, we’ll be gone most of the day on one of Denali’s famous bus tours to see some of the interior of this huge expanse. There is only one 92 mile long road into the park but as I mentioned, private vehicles can only travel the first 15. We have driven a total of 7,501 miles after 5 weeks on the road.

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