Date: 23 June 2001 (Saturday)

Start: Travel Camp, Ft Richardson AK

End: Denali Grizzly Bear CG, near Denali NP (230 miles)

It was 54f and sunny when we got up. When we got to the Denali area, it was 77 or so. It was almost entirely clear all day with a few high clouds.

I went to the service station at Elmendorf and asked for assistance with the headlight securing ring screws. The maintainer on duty couldn’t budge them either. So he brought out some liquid wrench penetrating oil in a can with a bendable tube applicator. He applied it liberally on one screw and it finally broke loose. He went inside and I finished the job. Then I bought a can and applicator and went back to the trailer.

Dolores was ready to leave, so we pulled the trailer to the dump station and got rid of excess fluids. Then we left, and got onto the Glenn Highway north-bound.

Just past Eagle River, in a 65mph zone, where the highway has two lanes in each direction, we were unwilling witnesses to a terrible single-car accident. We were in the right lane doing about 65, and folks in the left lane were passing while doing about 70. All of a sudden, a small gray car couple of hundred yards ahead of us in the left lane went off the road into the median. There was a big dust cloud through which you could occasionally see the car, going end over end and twisting in the process.

Everybody came to as rapid a halt as possible. I pulled onto the right shoulder behind a tour bus, then changed my mind as to where I wanted to be and went around the bus and stopped a couple of hundred yards ahead for greater safety.

The gray car was resting on its top in the left lane of the two going the opposite direction. It was really crunched; the front top and hood were crushed downward and the trunk and rear top were crushed downward. It was resting on the front top and hood.

By the time I parked where I felt safe, I could see three people next to the car with cell phones out and another setting down flares and starting to control traffic. Another six or so people were debating how to open the car. There seemed to be no point in my getting into it; I had no tools that could help and my emergency medical training is way out of practice. I decided I was more of a hazard than a benefit, so we pulled out carefully and left.

I don’t think either of us said five words for the next 50 miles. I sure hope the person somehow got through that accident, but I can’t see how anyone lived through a violent crash like that.

We turned onto the Parks Highway toward Denali and Fairbanks. After passing Wasilla, Dolores mentioned that this area has a high moose population (seems like anyplace moist in Alaska has moose). Sure enough, a few miles later we saw a female moose in the left ditch, apparently getting ready to cross the road.

We stopped for fuel and lunch at a place in Trapper Creek. Trapper Creek was homesteaded in 1959 by folks from Michigan (I don’t have any more details on that).

Soon after that we began to see Denali well. The weather certainly has been on our side.

The Denali part of the Alaska range is laid out southwest-to-northeast. The road approaches from the south and just above Trapper Creek it reaches the optimal viewing angle for the big mountains. Mt McKinley (Denali to all Alaskans – McKinley was an Ohio senator who had no interest in Alaska and never set foot in it) is just huge.

Denali is said up here to be the biggest mountain in the world, because it reaches 20,000 feet from a plateau of about 2,000 feet, whereas the Himalayas reach 29,000 feet from a plateau of 17,000 feet.

At the south Denali viewing spot, we could see and took pictures of Denali and the second-largest mountain (Mt Foraker – 17,400 feet – looks small by comparison) and the entire range. It’s just plain spectacular.

Then the road parallels the range up to the park entrance, so Denali passes behind you soon and gets harder to see.

At another pullout we were going to take pictures, but we were approached by another Jayco trailer owner who had a problem. He had had a blowout the day before, and now a thin rod protruding out of the frame to a point between the two right wheels was touching the rear tire again. While he and I were looking at it and wondering, Dolores read the legend on the side of the trailer that said "Slideout Manual Crank" and told us what it was. When he operated the slideout motor, the rod rotated in a weird circle proving it was indeed bent. We couldn’t straighten it, so we left it rotated away from the tire.

I gave him the name of the Jayco dealer we used in Anchorage a few days ago (he was going to Anchorage). He seemed very happy to now know what was happening; they took our picture and headed south; we headed north.

We checked in at our campground six miles south of the entrance to Denali National Park. We unhooked and went to the park. The visitor’s center had an orientation movie that was nice, but we found that we needed to go to the hotel to talk about tours. We tried to change our tour reservation to another one, but struck out. Church was being held in the auditorium, so we did that for this weekend. Then we had dinner in the dining room.

The hotel and its dining room here are vastly smaller than those at Yellowstone. I guess they just don’t get the traffic here that they get there.

Dinner was very good, and the young server was so enthusiastic it was a pleasure just to listen to her. She comes from Eugene, OR but said her favorite hiking area in the state is near South Sisters, close to where cousin Lynn has her lodge. She had been on a hike here yesterday and came across a pair of grizzly bears.

After dinner, we took a drive up the 15 miles of road into the park that one is allowed to travel. The rest of the road is limited to bus traffic. This way, the park officials can limit the effect humans have on the interaction between the animals. For instance, wolf packs still run wild here, taking the weaker animals of other species as food.

We returned to the little house in the funny campground and got organized for tomorrow.