July 5-6, 2012: South to Anchorage

July 5-6, 2012: South to Anchorage

We left the rv park and headed south. The first day’s goal was to check out Denali State Park, and maybe spend the night there. It was only ten bucks a night and it did offer a view of the south face. After traveling only eighty some miles we turned into the campground/parking lot.

As we drove in there was Denali, and it was mostly out, so of course we had to camp there and hope for the best. Camping was basically pulling into one of the painted pull through spots on the asphalt and throwing ten bucks into an envelope.

People came and went and before too long another camper pulled in and parked. As it was time to walk Molly we headed over in the area of the others and discovered they were also from Wyoming, and only sixty miles from where we worked, played, and lived for thirty years.

So we went back to our fifth wheel and waited for Denali to completely come out of the clouds. It was so tantalizing as patches of blue sky would head toward the mountain and then a cloud would form and add to the layers that hid the summits. I finally gave up and went to bed, telling Renita to please wake me if the mountain came out.

Waking at one thirty am I looked and the same clouds still hid the peak. Falling back to sleep I again rose at seven am and there was the Mountain, it had come out! I rushed back to bed and told Renita to get up and I have never seen her move so fast. However we weren’t fast enough as a cloud formed and grew, again hiding the top.

So we packed up and headed further south, past Byers Lake and down to the South Viewpoint of the State Park. As we pulled in we could see the best viewing of the mountain we have seen and cars and buses filled the lot as people rushed to the viewing area to capture a picture of the mountain.

I overheard one lady tell her friend that this was the first time she had seen the mountain and it was her fifth trip! We took image after image as the mountain covered itself with a new layer of clouds. It looked kind of like a birthday cake with layer after layer stacked on top of one another.

As we were about to leave Renita heard a different lady talking about the bears on the braided river. Looking, I spotted two big cubs racing across an opening and I do mean racing. It’s one thing to hear that bears are fast but it’s another thing to actually see how fast they can move.

We never spotted the sow and so we took off as we had miles to go to reach the city. The road actually improved near Talkeetna and became a four lane highway as we cruised through Wasilla. I never did get to see Russia as there are mountains in the way,(ok I won’t repeat that joke again).

The traffic increased and I found myself detesting the nearing city, even before we got there. Checking in we paid fifty seven dollars a night for our pull through, and well, the bad feelings about Anchorage intensified. Perhaps it will be better tomorrow after a good night’s sleep. Clear skies