Denail Highway to Denali Nat'l Pk, AK

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Monday August 20, 2007 Denali Highway to Denali National Park
The last 30 miles of the Denali Highway had some very bad parts and some pretty good parts. The terrain was rolling tundra with white spruce. The day was cloudy so at the Mt. McKinley viewpoint we were out of luck. We didn’t make many geology stops today, but we did have to turn around and recover some miles because we missed some folded rock. Never did find it. We were on the main highway to Denali by 11:00 am. We planned to spend one night out of the park with electricity and internet service so we could catch up on some things. After choosing a campground about 6 miles south of the park, we headed up to Denali.
There is one site where you go to pick up shuttle bus tickets and campground reservations. I had all ready made reservations so we picked up the bus tickets and campground info without a wait. The reservation board indicated there was space on most shuttles and in the campgrounds for the next three days. We plan to spend 2 days in the campground near the entrance and 3 days in the campground 30 miles from the entrance. Since traffic is limited, once you are in this campground you can only move your vehicle once; when you leave.
We wanted to sign up for what’s called a discovery hike with a Park Ranger. It’s a guided hike out in the park, but you can’t sign up more than 2 days in advance and they didn’t have the info available on the possible hikes for the next few days so we couldn’t make reservations. Hopefully, we can find out more tomorrow.
Tomorrow we plan to hike on our own. You can drive your car down the park road for the first 15 miles, so we will probably drive in. There are no hiking paths in the park. It’s basically open tundra. It should be interesting!
No photos today.

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