Denali Day 3

We had a few more things we wanted to do in the park, so we stayed for another full day. First, we heard that the dogs were extra friendly in the mornings before the first demo because they hadn't had to deal with people all day long. So we went in right as they opened at 9 to give some more pets and get the kennel's stamp, which we didn't get last time because we had forgotten our passport.

 

We purchased our National Parks Passport when we went to Haleakala in July and are looking for stamps whenever we are in a national park. We thought there would be a specific spot for stamps from each park. Instead, there are just several pages for the stamps from each region. We also didn’t realize that a lot of parks have multiple stamps, so that leaves us the fun of trying to find all the stamps and figure out where they all are. 

There were 7 total stamps for Denali. One was down in Talkeetna, and when we went to the visitor center there we forgot to bring the passport with us. Another other one was for the backcountry center, which was closed for the season. We did get the other 5 though from the main visitor center, the science center, the kennels, the Toklat bus stop and the Eielson visitor center.  

 

The second thing we wanted to check out was the science and learning center. It turns out it’s really heavily geared towards young children but there was some cool stuff, like a microscope with a variety of samples from around the park. 

After that the only thing on our schedule was to hang out and use the internet so that Andreas could draft for his fantasy football league. With a few hours to kill, we went on a great short hike through the park near the visitor center.

 

We ended the day by driving into the park again a little further with our own RV. We had a few more amazing moose encounters and the park at dusk was amazing. 

  

All in all it was a pretty chill day. Checked a few things off the list before heading back to our pullout to head south in the morning. 

Denali Day 2

The first 15 miles of the park are paved and are accessible in private vehicles. After that you need to get a bus ticket to get further into the park. There is only one road into a park about the size of the state of Massachusetts. There are two types of buses going into the park and they each have various stopping and turn around points. We elected to take the non-narrated bus to the Eielson Visitor center at mile 66 on the park road, which is about a four hour trip each way. Even though it wasn't actually a tour bus, our driver, Anna, was super informative and talked a bit about the different animals and answered questions people had throughout the trip. 

 

You can choose to get on and off the bus whenever you want if you want to hike around for a bit in the middle of the wilderness. In order to get back on, you just need to flag down any other bus going in the right direction. We didn’t end up doing that this time but we want to come back sometime and do a multi-day back country backpacking trip. We’ll just need to come back without the kids. The scenery was absolutely stunning the whole time. 

 

 

The buses are a great way to see wildlife. Everyone on the bus is supposed to call out if you see anything worth stopping for and the driver will stop. And boy did we see wildlife! 

We saw two groups of moose: 

  

Moose are the biggest animal in Denali, with an adult bull moose weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Moose eat mostly willow and survive the winter by slowing down their metabolism to a crawl. Willow are much shorter here and quite easily accessible to the moose. 

We saw 15 different bears! Several alone, but several mothers with their cubs: 

The coolest bear encounter we had was the last one. As we were leaving one of the rest stops there was a mother bear and her cub hanging out right next to the bridge that we were driving over. They were incredibly close to the bus so we got a really great view. 

Grizzly bears are pretty amazing because they will just about anything from berries and roots to moose. The key to meeting a grizzly bear in the park is not to run! Running will kick in their predator instincts for a chase. Instead, hold your ground. Most of the time that a wild bear charges, it is bluffing to size you up, and if you run, it will run you down.

We saw quite a few caribou on our trip. Including several with some really big racks. 

   

Both male and female caribou have antlers and they loose them every winter. The males generally loose them after they finish fighting for the females in the fall, but the pregnant female will keep them all winter until her calves are born. She will use her antlers to fend off the males who might try to take the her food from them. Caribou eat a lichen almost exclusively and they are big enough that they need about two garbage backs worth of the that lichen every day in the spring, summer, and fall. 

When the new antlers are coming in they are covered in a furry skin called velvet while they harden. We were lucky enough to be here in the season that they shed their velvet and got to see one caribou as the velvet was shedding. 

We also saw a few packs of Dall Sheep. These guys were always far away, up on a hillside, so it was hard to get a great picture. 

 

Dall sheep are actually the reason Denali National Park exists. The sheep are a nice white color and stand out amazingly well against the rocks in the summer. Overhunting of these sheep lead people to petition Washington D.C. to protect the wildlife of the area, which led to the initial declaration of the park as a protected area. 

Possibly our most exciting animal sighting was a lynx. On our way back she ran across the road right in front of the bus. Usually lynx and skittish and stay away from the road but this one was curious and stood in the bushes next to the road checking us out for quite a while. We didn’t get very good pictures of her, just enough to prove we saw her. 

 

Kathleen also saw two foxes but was two slow calling them out for the driver to stop. He was already driving on for a bear spotting ahead so we’re not sure that he would have stopped anyway. The two foxes were in a stream bed and only about 40 feet away from the bus but there were only visible for about 5 seconds because of the way the banks hid them in either direction. 

Eielson is know for its great views of the mountain itself, however the weather around the mountain is really hard to predict. Unfortunately we didn’t get a great view, but the landscape was amazing none the less. 

 

Including the time we spent at the Eielson visitor center we were gone for about 10 hours and were exhausted from all of the excitement. But it was a very very successful day. Well worth the cost of the bus. Needless to say, Aiden was super excited to have us back after a long day alone with Declan.

Denali, Days 0 and 1

We drove down towards Denali National Park after leaving Fairbanks. The drive down was amazing. Alaska has some massive mountain ranges but it is surprisingly flat in-between in many places. If you get up onto even a small ridge you can often for many miles giving some stunning views. 

We arrived at the park fairly late on Sunday night, so not much was open to explore. All of the RV accessible campsites were full through at least Wednesday so we ended up leaving the park and staying at a pull out about 2 miles North of the park entrance. 

On Monday morning we headed back into the park. We wanted to go on a quick ranger lead hike that left from the visitor center. It was about 2 hours and was a pleasant stroll. 

 

They also have day long “Discovery Hikes” that are off trail backcountry hikes that rangers lead that are more strenuous. We didn’t end up taking one of those this time, but it sounds like a lot of fun and is on our list if we ever come back. The main bummer of hiking in National Parks this trip is that Aiden isn’t allowed on most trails. She is allowed on a bike path right next to the road, and the road, but that is it. Instead of doing a backcountry hike we did take a bus into the park (also without Aiden), for more information on that check out the Day 2 post. 

After the ranger walk we went back to the camper for lunch and then checked out the visitor center. Denali has a really nice visitor center with a ton of information. We spent several hours in there. 

The other activity that we did on Monday was the sled dog demonstration. Denali is the only national park that has a working sled dog team. They are used to patrol the park in the winter time. At one point they tried switching the dogs out for tractors and snow machines but they kept breaking down in the 20 below and colder climate. 

We started by getting to walk around and look at all of the dogs. There were several dogs that we were able to get up close and meet. 

 

They have one puppy, Jewel, who recently joined the pack from another Kennel in the area. She was adorable. 

There were also two rooms with more information about the dogs, their history and their role in the park. We learned a lot. 

Three times a day they do a sled demo in which a ranger talks about the dogs for a little bit and then they harness up four dogs and attach them to the summer sled. It was pretty fun to see how excited the dogs all get to get the chance to get out and pull the sled. The ones that didn’t get picked seemed so jealous of the ones who did. 

After the dog demonstration we had a casual evening hanging out near the mercantile at one of the campgrounds. We did a load of laundry, used their internet and started to make a dent in our thank you notes. We were super excited to get deeper into the park on Tuesday. 

Chena Hot Springs

We headed out toward Prudhoe bay Friday night but we weren’t fully committed to making it all the way up there. We had heard very mixed reviews about wether the trip was actually worthwhile, and there was reports of snow on the pass. Unfortunately as we started out the highway in that direction, the RV started to making a strange new noise. When pushing down past a certain point on the throttle, it sounded like the engine was over-revving, or that there was a lot of air rushing around. It was most notable when the engine shifted down a gear to try to pick up speed. The noise was strangely inconsistent and even went away entirely from time to time. We didn't want to risk being on the Dalton highway with this issue but we really didn’t want to go back to our Walmart in Fairbanks, so we decided to head up the Chena Hot Springs, only 50 miles from Fairbanks. 

One of our websites said that there was a free campsite up the road to the hotsprings but it must have been out of date. So we ended up driving all the way to the end of the road at the hotsprings and decided to splurge and pay for camping for the first time on our trip. It was $20 for a dry camp spot, which seemed like a lot but it was a nice place and we knew we wanted to spend the next day exploring the hot springs. 

The hot springs sell a day pass for $15 a person that lets you come and go as many times as you want. They also have showers :) We were going to get up at 6:45 to get in right when they opened but ended up staying in bed until 7:45. We were still some of the first people in pool and it was great. 

There is an indoor pool and two hot tubs that were basically shallow, hotel pool quality. Not great. But outside there was another hot tub we didn’t even look at, and a giant rock pool fed by the hot spring. It was mostly about 4-5 feet deep and fairly large. In one place there was a nice rain machine that sprinkled your upper body with cold water. In one corner there was a powerful jet of warm water that gave a great back massage. We stayed in for a couple a couple of hours before taking off to explore for the day. 

Chena had a million things to do, 95% of which you had to pay for. But there were mountain bike rentals, horse back riding, flight seeing, an ice museum, dog cart/sled rides (depending on the season), a so much more. We elected to not spend any more money and check out one of the many hiking trails. Kathleen will probably end up posting another post about all the plants on the hike because she was hard core geeking out. But it was a beautiful hike. A little muddy at times though… 

 

After our hike we really wanted to check out the dog kennels. They have tours of the kennels for $20 but there is also a visitor center so we were just going to go down and look around. It was cool, but the worker kinda ignored us, which felt a little weird. We both had a lot of questions and the visitor center really wasn’t set up to just be able to look around ourselves. But we did get to see the dogs and were surprised yet again by the wide variety.

There were signs posted all around the resort to ask about Aspen, the 10 year old sled dog who was looking for a new home. We were sorely tempted… We found him sitting on his dog house down at the kennels and were hoping that someone around the kennels would come talk to us about him but no one did. He looked like a sweet old guy, but it is probably better for Declan that we didn’t introduce another member into our family trip. Yet. 

After looking at the dogs we went back into the hot springs. Pounding down water the whole time. It was nice to get to shower off the mud and sweat from the hike and the hot water felt great on our tired bodies. 

We didn’t stay as long the second time because we got hungry and wanted to save our energy to come back one last time as it was finally getting dark, so we made dinner and took a nap. The hot springs are open until 11:45pm year round. We hadn’t actually seen darkness yet in Alaska because we are usually head to bed at around 10 and even though the sun has set it is far from dark. But we went back to the hot springs around 10 last night and enjoyed watching it get slowly darker. The hot springs were really nice as the air temperature outside started to plummet. There was tons of steam rising off of the pool and there were fun color changing lights shining into the steam for a party vibe. Even though it was the most crowded at night, it was also the most fun. We both agree that we want to try to come back to the hot springs when we come up to volunteer at the Yukon Quest in November. 

We treated yesterday as a sort of Honeymoon day, allowing ourselves to splurge on hot spring time, not thinking about driving or the weird noise that our RV is making (too much) and just being, which really is the hope of the trip. It was really really nice. We even opened the “Honeymoon” card from Kathleen’s Aunt Julie, thanks for your words of wisdom Aunt Julie. 

Now we are back at the Subway in our Walmart in Fairbanks using the internet. None of the car places are open again today because it’s Sunday and some googling leads us to believe that we have a vacuum hose issue which shouldn’t be too severe. On the drive back it acted up at first but stopped after the first 10 miles. We're thinking it may be worse when wet? We’re going to head down to Denali now and then hopefully get the RV looked at down in Anchorage.