Denali National Park- day hiking

  Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Erin enjoying the view

After the disappointment of not seeing the aurora the night before, I was excited to get into Denali National Park and do some exploring. We started off at the Wilderness Access Center, where we bought our bus tickets for the trip further into the Park the next day (you arr not allowed to drive your personal vehicle into the park.) We then went to the Visitor Center to learn more about the Park. For sure I thought I would get to add another dead stuffed bear to my count, but was disappointed to see that they were environmentally sensitive and only had a fake bear. Fiberglass replicas aren't the real, dead deal so I couldn't count it.

Squirrel with a vew

Rick and I wanted to get away from the crowds, so we went hiking (most of the cruise ship people don't venture off of the buses.) We decided to go for the gusto,and took the hike to the Mt. Healy overlook. It turned out to be one of the steepest hikes I've ever done, but well worth the effort. The higher we got, the views of the surrounding valleys and mountains got better. At the overlook, we sat down and ate a picnic lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had an arctic ground squirrel hang out next to us while we enjoyed our sandwiches. At first we thought he was begging for food, but then we realized he was mad that were were camped out on top of his burrow! We hiked a little further up the mountain, but it was pretty cold and windy up there so we started to make out way back down. Steep trails are always harder than you think on the way down, and our legs were pretty jello-ee by the time we reached the bottom.

Sled dog

It was afternoon when we go back tot the base, we still wanted to go see the sleg dog kennels. Against our better judgement, we decided to hike there instead of drive. We had already hiked 6 very steep miles, so what's a few more? We took the Rock Creek trail and headed off for the kennels. The trail wasn't as flat as I thought it would be, and we didn't even see a creek the entire time. Still beautiful, though. 2 miles later we got to the kennels 20 minutes before they closed and we were very tired. The dogs were cute, but we arrived at feeding time so they were preoccupied with dinner. When we left the kennels we still faced another 2 mile hike back to the car. It was a very long 2 miles. We were tired and hurting and starving, and when it was all said and done we had hiked 10 miles. Well, worth it though.

We ate dinner at a nice restaurant near our cabin. I had some fabulous salmon and rick and BBQ pork ribs. We definitely earned that dinner! That night I wanted to look for the aurora again, but there were clouds and I was to tired. I fell asleep at 9:30 before it was even really dark.