Fairbanks, AK to Denali National Park, AK – 141 Miles
Not much to report today. We bid our new friends Jock and Karen adieu, promising to stop by and visit them when we pass through Whitehorse on our way home, then started the next leg of our journey. We passed the wildlife refuge I mentioned yesterday and the sandhill cranes were closer to the viewing area alongside the road, so we stopped and I snapped off a couple of photos. Then it was onto the Parks Highway toward Denali. It’s interesting that, although the highways are numbered like everywhere else, they are more commonly referred to by a name, like the Richardson Highway or the Parks Highway.
Before leaving Fairbanks, we stopped at Pioneer Park, a recreation of early Fairbanks in a park-like setting on the banks of the Chena River. They have relocated several of the original settlers’ cabins and constructed complementary buildings in the style of the turn of the 20th century. In one of these is a very good small museum with artifacts and displays of the period. We wished we could have stayed longer but we were anxious to get to Denali.
Heading south out of Fairbanks, the Parks Highway immediately climbs up into a range of low hills and winds through these hills for about twenty miles before dropping back down into the broad Tanana River valley. After another 25 or 30 miles, it crosses the Nenana River, a tributary of the Tanana, at the town of Nenana. The road then follows the Nenana River upstream toward Denali. For the most part, the Parks Highway is in excellent shape, two traffic lanes plus a third climbing lane on hills, and with broad shoulders. A few miles north of Denali it narrows down and develops some fairly significant heaving, causing traffic to slow to 45-50 mph (at least for the sensible drivers). Just before the park entry is the small village of Denali Park, with a few shops, restaurants, hotels, and outfitters for rafting, jeeping (outside the park), and tours in and out of the Park. For those familiar with Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, think of Estes Park on a much smaller and less refined manner.
Upon entering Denali National Park, we went immediately to the Jacob’s Creek campground registration, located at the Jacob’s Creek Mercantile just a half mile inside the park. This is the only place where we have so far made campground reservations, and I’m glad we did. We arrived shortly after 3:00 pm and the campgrounds were filling rapidly. Like most National Park campgrounds, these are dry sites (no utilities), but they do have clean restrooms with real flush toilets, and showers and laundry in the nearby Mercantile building. Best of all is the cost -- $11.00 a night with the Federal senior pass.
We then went to the Wilderness Activity Center to purchase tickets to the park shuttle buses and arrange a “Discovery Hike,” a ranger-led interpretive hike out in the tundra. There was a little running around to do since we had to go to the Visitor Center to select the hike we wanted, get a voucher for that hike (which is limited to ten people), then return to the Wilderness Activity Center to actually pay the fee and arrange the shuttle bus. But the facilities were all within a 15 or 20 minute walk from the campground, so we got in a bit of much-needed exercise after all those miles of sitting on our butts in the motorhome. Finally, it was back to the campground for a late dinner and packing for tomorrow’s first tour up into the park.
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