The Denali Highway

Hello!

Now that the engagement flurry is calming down, we can start talking about our Alaska-specific adventures again.  And this weekend's adventure is the perfect one to get us back to the blog.

This weekend the Sheep Mountain crew (plus a few new additions) went out and drove the Denali Highway.  The Denali Highway is a 132-mile road that is unpaved for 110 miles.  It travels from Paxson to Cantwell (which is 27 miles from the entrance to the national park) and gives some of the best views of Alaska there are to be seen.  You can see everything from Denali to the Wrangell range.  It is truly awesome.  And when you have a great group of people you're traveling with, it is even better.

We started the trip Friday after work and camped about 30 miles north of Glennallen.  The next morning we woke up and headed out onto the gravel road:

As we said, the views were stunning:

After 25 miles or so, we stopped and went on a 3 mile hike to Tangled Lakes:

Peter brought his fishing rod and tried to catch us some dinner.  It didn't work so well:

There was also a little boat at the edge of the water.  We're not sure what it was for, but we assume it was for people going to cabins around the area:

We got back in the cars and drove even more.  Around mile 85 we got out again and decided to climb up a small ridge.  Of course, being near Denali, there were bears around the area.  Here's the paw prints to prove it:

We drove another 20 miles and then camped for the evening.  The next morning we packed up camp and headed out on the road again:

After 133 miles, we reached the end of the road and turned back toward Anchorage.  But not before we got one last look at Denali (Mt. McKinley) along the way:

P.S. More about the controversy surrounding calling the mountain McKinley or Denali later.

So that was the trip.  It was a lot of fun, very dusty, and stunningly beautiful.  We still can't believe we live here.

Tomorrow is summer solstice: the most sun we will have all year.  We're climbing a mountain at midnight and watching the sun dip.  We'll see how it goes!