Denali National Park We slept in late this morning, the after-effects of yesterday’s hike. After a nice hot breakfast of sausage and egg tacos, the first order of business was to go to the lost and found and the Visitor Center to see if my camera case had been turned in, but unfortunately it was not there. We had sorta talked about driving up to the Savage River turn-around, the farthest place you can drive in a private vehicle at Mile 15 on the Park Road. There is a short, level, two-mile hike along the river there that we had talked about doing, but it started raining. Besides, Jeanette wasn’t quite ready for another hike. One of the things we wanted to do was to see the sled dog demo at the kennels a couple of miles up the road at the Park Headquarters, but we missed the 10:00 show. The next demo would be at 2:00 pm, so we just came back over to the Riley Creek Mercantile to use the wi-fi there to check e-mail and upload yesterday’s blog post. I checked the Tiger Yahoo forum (the special interest group for our motorhome) to get an update on the location of another Tiger I knew was someplace in Alaska. There was a post from them saying they were here in Denali and staying at our same campground. We hadn’t seen them yet (it’s a big campground – three loops with 140-150 sites), so I posted our campsite number and said we hoped we could meet with them later this afternoon or evening.
As I walked back out to our Tiger, there sat another one in the Mercantile parking lot. It wasn’t the same one I had just seen on the Yahoo group, but another Tiger owned by a couple from Laramie, Wyoming, who were just on their way outbound from the Park. We chatted with them for a few moments, and they said the other Tiger had pulled in right next to them in the next campground loop over from ours. Since it was time for us to get over to the dog sled demo, we made a note to check on them when we returned to the campground later in the day.
The dog sled demo was moderately interesting. The main thing I learned was that the best sled dogs are not the fluffy Siberian huskies you always see in the movies, but rather a mixed breed containing Alaskan husky blood; in other words, a somewhat slender, long-legged mutt, with fairly long hair and a full tail. But whatever they are, they are high-spirited dogs who love to work. There are twenty or so dogs in the kennel, and when the handlers started to hitch up the five dogs to the sled for the demo, the rest of the dogs got all exited and started barking, begging to be chosen. It was like a bunch of grade school kids who knew the answer to the teacher’s question, raising their arms and calling, “Ooh, ooh, me, Miss Jones, call on me!”
After the sled dog show we decided to drive up to the Savage River anyway. It was too late to hike, but we thought we might see some wildlife along the way. We did see a nice bull caribou down on the bank of the river about four or five hundred yards away, and a very large cow moose on the hillside above the road a half mile or more away, but nothing closer. By the way, for anyone who read the book or saw the movie Into the Wild, or ranger yesterday said the actual occurrence on which the story is based took place on the Savage River just outside the Park boundaries. That’s how remote this country is once you get off the road.
Still hoping to find my camera case, we stopped at the Wilderness Activity Center, which is the dispatch point for all the shuttle buses. I hoped to see if the dispatcher could tell me when the particular bus we were on yesterday was scheduled to return. I was thinking that maybe they missed seeing the camera case when they cleaned the bus last night and that it may still be on the bus floor, under a seat. The bus hadn’t returned yet, and she didn’t know when it would get in. The Discovery Hike bus goes to the end of the road after it drops off the hikers, and then becomes the “sweeper,” the last bus of the day to pick up straggling hikers late in the day. That means it doesn’t get back until pretty late. But the dispatcher said, “Wait a minute, let me check something.” She went inside to the Information desk and pulled out a couple of boxes of odds and ends, and there was the camera case, complete with my spare battery and memory card. Hallelujah!
Before returning to our campsite we drove around the other campground loop to look for the other Tiger. It turned out to be just a stone’s throw from our site. We could actually see it through the trees, but not well enough to recognize it as a Tiger. The owners were not there, so we figured they were on one of the hikes or tours that got in late. We left a note on their windshield inviting them to come over after they got in. So after supper they did come over and we had a nice, but short visit. They were new Tiger owners, having just picked theirs up from the factory in December. Other than the drive back from the factory to their home in Tucson and a couple of short shake-down trips, this was their first big trip. And what a trip it is. They have been on the road since early June, and plan to be out until late September. We hope to see them again at next summer’s Tiger rally.
That’s about it for now. We leave Denali in the morning and head for Anchorage, then the Kenai Peninsula.
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