RV and Denali

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Haven’t heard from us for a couple days? Let me tell you, its because camping totally sucks in the rain! That , and the RV Park in Talkeetna we went to had RV’s side by side like LA traffic, right on top of each other. To make things worse (but really, the rain and crappy site was the downer), we couldn’t take our flight over Mt McKinley as the clouds prevented the wing and a prayer planes from flying - they only go on sight and vision had a 3’ distance. So we camped there, Juli looked for every out to a Hilton, but found the closest was in either Seattle or Vancouver, neither being a hop skip nor jump. She made it clear to all of us that she wasn’t really a camper (shocker), and was looking for 700 thread count sheets. I emailed a friend of mine this issue and he suggested she fold over the 175 thread count stuff we had 4x to make it work. Smart ass.
So today we left a bit earlier than expected as our flight around the mtn was cancelled. Oh yea, the RV. For those of you who haven’t done this, I would say it’s a combination of “no big deal” and “what the hell” all in one. So you are dragging around water for showers, toilet, drink, cooking, etc. when you use it, though, it needs to go somewhere. So you’re 75gallon clean water gets separated into two discharge tanks—the “grey matter” one from drinking, brushing teeth (yes, we did that), etc, and the “other” unspeakable tank. When we rented this think the woman gave us about 7 minutes on how to work everything, and as the boys forced us to watch “RV” with robin Williams the night before I was especially keen on how to eliminate the elimination in the tanks. We assumed we’d try this before entering Denali. However, after three of us took showers this morning (and we have of course used the water for a variety a cooking, cleaning etc), I got ready to take a shower and found 2 inches of water in the shower basin. Being both concerned and clueless, I called the rental place to find out this was discharge backing up. Obviously, this was from tank “1” as if from tank “2” I’d have already returned the POS travelling crapper to where it belonged! Now forced to do the nasty deed of sending things out, turned out the hose and relief valves worked well and both tanks flushed to where they belonged - anywhere but in my RV! We dumped (so to speak), went back to the campsite where jaden and I showered and then dumped again (the RV, not me). Then headed north 130+ miles to Denali. Rain still coming, not really getting the point of the whole gig. Finally, mid afternoon we got to Denali and the visitor spot, where life got goo again, finally.
After checking in the Ranger confirmed all our stuff and made us feel better, telling us in going to Teklanika, that we were getting the true experience. The campground we went to is 29 miles in the park. Only shuttles are allowed past marker 15 so we arent’ allowed to leave until we’re going for good. Transportation is only by shuttle bus. We stopped at the visitor center and then drove in, being lucky and seeing a moose in the very distance, and a caribou a ways away but good. We arrived a Teklanika to be greeted by the host telling us about some wolves that live in the campground and a lynx also. That, and a couple brown bears have been sighted about a mile from here. Life got much better as the sun mostly came out, things dried out, and our campsite is much more spaciaous. We lit a fire, bbq’d some pork chops and veg’s, and had smores. Life is much better.

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