Been in Alaska now for 6 days. Doesn't seem like that long, but the long days with little darkness, I think make the things run together. I didn't have internet to readily available in Denali, but my days were long anyway.
I flew in last Sunday night, we picked up the van from the port of Anchorage on Monday morning. Rain, rain, rain... it rained almost the whole way up to Denali. We stopped at a AK DOT control site to run, but it was a little too wet. Stopped in Wasilla for lunch, no Palin sighting nor any Russia sighting from Wasilla... but did see a Palin/McCain sweatshirt on a high school kid.
First day at Denali was filled with calibrations and verifications, but the second day we went for the glory. Most of Denali is roadless, peopleless, and bear-filled... however there is one road, one 93 mile road, of which about 80 miles are unpaved, mostly 1 to 1.5 lanes. We usually don't collect anything unpaved, but the park wanted video since most of the year its snow-covered, video will help them a lot with planning.
The park doesn't allow most private vehicles on the road, lots of buses though, lots... filled with people who would probably be too scared to drive the road anyway (read-too old). No guard rails, a couple of pot holes, some wolves, a couple of bridges, and one asshole NPS dude (that's you Brian D).
Did find out that one of my favorite bands, Trampled by Turtles - bluegrass from Duluth; was starting their Alaska tour in Denali. It was an awesome show... real nice treat.
Here's some shots of the road and from the road....
It wasn't this narrow for 80 miles, but really had to keep an eye out for buses on turns.
Tough to get the steepness, but this is right out the passenger window.
Really tough, per usual, to capture the scenery. The mountains in Denali though seem bigger, more rugged than anything down in America (it's what they the lower 48 up here). That along with the daylight, was twilight at 1am the other night... makes Alaska a pretty unique place.
Here's some more pictures from the road that day... saw a bunch of bears, a wolf that walked right past the van and some caribou.
So supposedly Mt McKinley is in the park... but it's pretty tough to get a clear day to see it. I wasn't lucky enough... Here's a couple of pics of mountains close to McKinley... think of it as about triple the size of anything you see.
Pretty sure Denali (McKinley) is in the clouds on this pic... just imagine with me.
Since Denali, we've moved onto Seward. Kenai Fjords NP is located down here, and has some pretty neat glaciers. I'm heading out for a boat ride tomorrow... should have some more pictures.
