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Published: June 26th 2015
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This will be a long post, so get comfy! Apparently, we have adjusted to sleeping when it is light outside as we slept until 6:30 Tuesday morning! Our day began with putting $20 worth of quarters in washers & dryers at the laundromat! We enjoyed a nice walk & resistance band exercises in the RV after our walk. We had lunch in the RV & went to Fairbanks to get my nails done! The gal did a great job, & now I am good to go for awhile. Very important. 😊 While I was getting my nails done, Mike went to the RV supply store in Fairbanks & found a few things he couldn’t live without. We needed a few groceries & found Fred Meyer Grocery, which rivals a Wal-Mart Superstore. We bought 2 footstools that match our brown leather swivel/rockers perfectly. The best part is that the lids come off & each one holds our favorite fleece blankets! After we came home to the RV, the AC guy came to install the part we needed. Mike’s butt is burning $602 later with parts & labor!! After the AC guy left, we drove to North Pole, AK to get our picture
taken with Santa in “his house”. Wednesday morning, we drove south to Denali Nat’l Park & Preserve where we are camped out for 2 nights at Riley Creek Campground just inside the park entrance. I wanted a picture of our GMC Denali pickup with the Denali Nat’l Park sign, but Mike says it was too dirty to be in the picture. Our trip odometer turned to 4000 miles this morning. The Milepost mentioned several scenic overlooks on the way here, which I quit reading after a short time, because we could see nothing due to smoke! At this campground we have no hookups; i.e. electric, water & sewer, but we do have the almighty wifi. 😊 Beautiful campground in the trees! We arrived here at 1 PM & had the afternoon to browse through a few shops. We shared a really good ice cream cone, but Mike wonders if it was worth $6? 😊 Not to mention our quart of “desperation milk” for $4! After supper, we went for a nice hike around the campground vicinity & discovered a park ranger waiting for us outside the camper when we returned. Apparently, we misunderstood the park rules, & had our generator
running after the “posted hours” to charge our electronics & RV battery. At this writing, with the generator running, Mike has the alarm on his phone set for 8 PM so we don’t get in trouble again! Now on to our big day today. We booked an 11 hour bus ride/tour to Wonder Lake, which is 85 miles, one way, into Denali Nat’l Park, which is almost to the end of the road into the park. Private vehicles are only allowed 15 miles into the park so this was the only way to really see the beauty of this wonderful place on earth. It was awesome, amazing, & outstanding! We were blessed with beautiful, cloud free skies & wonderful temps, but unfortunately, the smoke hid Mt. McKinley. Although, in the picture, if one looks closely, you can make out the outline of “the great one” Denali. At 20,320 feet tall, the tallest peak in North America, we thought we were looking at clouds, but it actually was the summit of the mountain. We were lucky today, as those who we talked to that rode the bus yesterday, could see nothing. As the pictures show, we saw lots of wildlife! We
saw 4 grizzly bear, 4 moose including one baby, 6 caribou & dozens of arctic squirrels, which stand 18” tall. They stand up on their hind legs like our striped gophers at home, although these are much taller! We had a great bus driver, who maneuvered the twists & turns very well; most of it was one lane gravel road. We drive south tomorrow to Talkeetna……stay tuned!
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