Denali and Fairbanks

This leg we continued north toward Denali and Fairbanks with  one night stops in Portage Valley and Willow, halfway to Denali. We cruised into Denali park town, which is just a strip of a town with hotels on one side of the highway and food and souvenirs on the other. Our camp is 6 miles north of the town and is typical of all the camps we've found in Alaska. It's pretty small, crowded with caravaners and mostly gravel. Not much you can do to spruce things up up here.

We planned a hike in the park, so went down to the visitor center and found free shuttles to get around. It took us 13 miles into the park, which is all the farther you can drive your car. There are bus tours in farther, the end of the road is 92 miles and a 13 hour tour. No guarantee you will see the mountain or wildlife. Kinda like fishing. We have seen the mountain before and all of our time here it has been cloudy. Even though the hike was fairly easy and short, only 2 miles, it was along the Savage river and a nice day. The terrain up here is pretty stark, few trees, scrubby bushes and rocky mountains. You can really see the effect of permafrost on plants, everything seems stunted.

Denali in the clouds

With a tour saver book we picked up, we took in a dinner theater at the Princess lodges chalet. Big salmon and rib dinner, family style and entertainment afterwards. Even hit some of the souvenir stores. The weather was not conducive to many outdoor activities but we did pick some wild blueberries just back of the campground. Their fate is probably a cobbler.  "And it was tasty" said Bill!

Big pots everywhere

We continued on to Fairbanks and stopped for a week. Fairbanks is a smallish town, but has the necessities. Everyone seems to live in clearing in the trees. You don't see subdivisions, just lots of trees. We found a couple of brew pubs, HooDoo and Silver Gulch. The food at Silver Gulch was good, we enjoyed a club sandwich with a cheese pizza as the crust.. There are roads north of Fairbanks one can take, the Dalton highway (Ice Road truckers) to Prudhoe bay, but it's almost 500 miles of dirt, no thanks, to Circle, but it's almost closed, and to Manley hot springs, again all dirt and a ways. We opted for the paved road to Chena hot springs and it was a good day trip. The hot springs was very hot and very nice. The drive was scenic, except for all the smoke and we spotted 3 moose. We almost took a river dinner cruise, but the last thing we felt like eating was another big salmon bake dinner. Time to cut back on eating.

AHHH

Our campground was actually in North Pole and of course we visited town cuz that's where Santa is. Got pictures of reindeer, a sleigh and the house for the little granddaughter.

And along one of the highways is a pull out to see the pipeline. Pretty interesting and not all is above ground.

The time here in Fairbanks has been nice as we've prepared for the trip back to the lower 48.  Restock the larder and get the equipment ready for the road back.  Plus having a week of down time has been good for the body.  I think we're ready for the days of driving now.   This will be our last blog from Alaska.  Depending on what we have for phone signals or wifi at the Canadian RV parks will determine what we can send on the way back.