North to Denali

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Rich went downtown early to get our rental car - seats 8. We loaded up and got on the road around 9:30 headed for Denali. First, we drove out to Wasilla where our friends Mary, Tim, and Madeline live. They’re going to keep Daisy for three days while we’re gone. We haven’t seen them in almost two years, since they left Carson City, so it was great to see them and their place in Wasilla even for a short time. Mary got to meet my sisters, too!
Rowan was worried about Daisy and why she wasn’t with us.
It was a rainy day with low-hanging clouds, so we didn’t see any mountains, let alone Denali. We did see some more of the pitiful black spruce tree forests. They grow in poorly drained soil, including muskeg bogs and above permafrost. Janet especially likes these trees. They look like Charlie Brown trees. When some of the permafrost has melted, the trees lean this way and that and the forest is called a drunken forest.
When we got to Denali, we checked into our rustic log cabins and found out they had no shampoo or soap. We headed to the little town ,but since it had stopped raining we decided to go into the park and see what was there. On the way up, we saw a beautiful rainbow! We went to the end of the road and turned around. When we got to a store in town to stock up on shampoo, Art bought a puzzle of Denali. I bought Denali dominoes. We figured if we didn’t get to see the mountain, we would know what it looked like from the puzzle! We got some take-out food and went back to the cabins. We started the puzzle.
We didn’t see ANY animals today - except maybe a raven. Disappointment.
It stopped raining in the evening so everybody tried to get a photo outside at or near midnight.

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