Fairbanks and Denali

We arrive in Fairbanks on June 15th, a three day stay. We took a Riverboat cruise to view life along the Yukon river. Watched demonstration of sled dog training, and life at a native Alaskan village. Had tour of the famous Alaskan pipeline and visited the Fairbanks Ice museum to see examples of the ice art from the annual competition. These were not your "party" ice sculptures but were, in some cases, nearly 75 feet long and 20 feet tall.

From Fairbanks we traveled to a campground just outside of Denali National Park. We took 8 hour bus tour through the parking traveling nearly 90 miles inside. Private cars are only allowed 13 miles inside the park.

The tour guide was a women who had been driving the tours for nearly 17 years, and had hiked many of the trails. She split her time between Denali, Oregon, and Antarctica. All this and she is 65 years old. She was a treasure chest of information about the park, animals, and plants. We observed several grizzlies, included cubs, eagles, mountain sheep, and moose.

Unfortunately the day was too overcast to get a good look at the 20,000 ft high mountain.

It was a great couple of days, and a must see if you like national parks. The park is kept in it's natural state. Park officials do not interfere with fires, sick animals, or water migration, unless the public is in danger. They have managed to bring back the natural "balance" between predators and prey.

 

The only “downer” was the campground.  Basically a big parking lot, office was a shack and power was provided by diesel generator in the park.  Shortly after we arrived and hooked up our wagon master told us not to run our refrigerators on park power due to possible damage to electronics.  He should have told us before we arrived, I had already plugged our coffee maker in which was “toast” due to the power problems.

 

When we visited the park we found a beautiful campground nestled in the woods near the Denali entrance.  No hookups, but would have been far superior to where we were.  If you go via RV stay in the park!

We are off to Anchorage.