Day 54: Denali National Park

Thursday, June 23, 2016
Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States
Woke up to a beautiful sunny day and temps at 80 degrees! So I took advantage to give Sara an outdoor bath, since Linda and I had our showers last night also. We decided to use the RV shower ourselves since campground was charging $1 per minute in their showers and we did have water hooked up to RV. But this am we needed to unhook utilities so we can change to the Denali Park Campground, and dump sewer, and get Sara to Canine Resort. I am worried sick that she will be a barker and get kicked out of the resort, so we also stopped to give her a good run, hoping to tire her out some. We dropped her at the resort, and could hear her barking as we left the property - she's not normally a barker, but the kennels are empty except for one other dog and she likes to be around the people or other dogs. So I keep checking my phone as I drive away, expecting to get a "bad parent" phone call at any moment! But we headed to Denali and checked into Riley Campground on the Park property - this means no utilities, and very limited generator use allowed only at certain hours. So no brownies in the convection oven here! Next we got our bikes out and went exploring for where we will catch buses into the interior of the park tomorrow - all we know is it leaves at 6:45 am!! And it's supposed to be about an 11 hour tour to Wonder Lake, but we can catch earlier shuttles back. But the park is 6 million acres and we can only travel by bus 84 miles into the interior. Unless you get the wilderness training and want to hike under your own power!! I don't think we would make it - today our big task was riding to Denali's dog kennels, only 8 miles round trip with 1 mile being a 10% uphill grade! I wouldn't even know what that means except my RV books say to avoid roads with greater than 8% grade incline or decline!! We did have to debike and walk a little way, being passed by the Park's Shuttle buses every few minutes, but we made it to their sled dog demonstration on time. It was a nice demonstration and they told how the dog teams get them out to the wilderness areas in winter for providing supplies and updating research studies that are being done in the remote regions. Then it was a whiz trip back down the mountain to our campsite where we built a fire for the frozen salmon we purchased back in Whittier. We grilled the salmon and broccoli, plus some apple arugula salad made for a great dinner at our campsite - this might be one of the first days it was warm enough to eat outside and enjoy it! We saw a peak temp of 86 degrees today, but still much cooler than Atlanta's 86 degrees! Also, checked in on Sara, and they are letting her stay another day, altho she may be on probation! As I suspected, she was "just fine when we came out in the yard with her" so they let the owner's dogs play with her in the play yard. Let's hope she sleeps quietly tonight, because they have a music concert tomorrow! Sara may be having more fun than us if she doesn't get expelled! Early to bed tonight since early wake up tomorrow.
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vidalia1
2016-06-24

Loving the blog...

2025-05-22

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