Day 10: August 30, 2000
Denali Highway

When we woke up, the rain had stopped, which was a big relief. The sky was still overcast, but there were a few small spots of blue in the distance, so that was encouraging. With scenery like this around us, we really didn't want it to rain again. Getting washed up and dressed was a bit of an adventure. The bathroom (across the parking lot) was a single room with a toilet, sink, and shower, so you had to lock the entire bathroom when you went. This meant I'd be using the only bathroom the whole time I was there. Fortunately, it didn't seem like there were many people there, and fewer women. This is probably most often used by hunters, we figured. Anyway, I hurried as best I could. The shower was mercifully warm, if low on pressure. Walendo decided to take a shower too (he was going to pass), and we packed up and headed out.

View along Denali Highway

As we drove along, we just couldn't believe our eyes. The world had turned into bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The landscape is basically a huge expanse of open tundra with mountains in the distance on one or the other side. The hills are basically covered with small bushes and groundcover, and some areas have small evergreens in small clusters. The entire ground had been transformed into bright autumn colors, so everywhere you looked, it was vibrant. Even the covering on the mountains were a deep red, almost magenta, up to the peaks, which were either granite or were dusted in frost. It was stunningly beautiful. Initially, we stopped to take pictures every half mile or so, or so it seemed. Eventually, we sometimes made it a full mile without stopping. We kept saying, "Look at this! Just look at this!" and "Oh my god, this is amazing," until finally I kept saying "This is ridiculous!"

Brilliant colors along Denali Highway

Everywhere we looked, it was a feast for the eyes. I just couldn't take it all in. Sometimes it felt almost painful to keep myself from stopping to take a picture of everything I was seeing. As many shots as I took, I kept seeing different views with a different feel. There might be a lake in the foreground, or a marshy area with little inlets. Or just some particularly attractive arrangement of colors with evergreens scattered among it. At one point we came to a river with a little shack after a bend, bright red behind it, and a snowy mountain peek behind that.

River along Denali Highway

A guy was fishing in the river, so I took about a dozen shots, some with the fisher and some without. We were so lucky to have come to this road at this time. Apparently, it had started changing color about a week ago, and it seemed to be at its peak right then. At least at this time of year, this road is easily the most spectacular road I've ever been on anywhere. Without the fall foliage it would still be beautiful, but its beauty would be more in the vastness of the open planes with the peaks in the distance. Unless it's covered with abundant wild flowers, I think Beartooth Pass would have it beat during the summer.

Colorful trees with lake Denali Highway

All through the drive we were looking for wildlife, but we weren't so lucky. Fairly early on, I said "It would be nice if we saw a moose or something," and then I looked to my left, and there was what looked like a moose in the distance. Really, it was that immediate. I "oo"d and pointed, and Walendo said he saw it too. We came around the bend and parked, and then raced up over the bluff to try to take a picture, but by the time we did, it was gone. We looked some more, but coudln't find it. Other than that, we never saw any animals.

Colorful swamp on Denali Highway

We did try to trick them into coming out, pointing out that if we were moose or carbiou, this is where we would be, then suggesting that it was really only the most attractive, clever, and successful moose who would be smart enough to show themselves, and finally giving up and making sure they knew that we no longer were looking. Apparently, moose and caribou are too smart for reverse psychology. Other than the many pitstops for pictures, we stopped once at a little lodge about 60 miles in where I peed and got some hot chocolate. It was empty except for the owners who were telling bear stories. (The hot chocolate was only $1.00, one of the best bargains of the trip.)

Valley along Denali Highway

The whole road is 135 miles, and it was probably around mile 110 that we finally seemed to have our fill and were able to go several miles at a time without stopping. The landscape had opened up more, and we were looking down on a vast valley, all of red, yellows, and oranges still, with peaks much further in the background. It was actually a harder shot to capture, so I think that's part of what slowed down our picture taking. By the time we finally arrived in Cantwell, I suppose I'd had my fill, but I wouldn't have minded another day or two of that scenery. I hope at least some of the photos begin to do that road justice. What an experience!

Incredible colors on Denali Highway hillside

The west end of Denali Highway Ts into the Park Highway at Cantwell, which turned out to be a tiny town with two gas stations and not much else. After looking for more, we stopped at a food mart at one of the stations and Walendo got a not-so-great sandwich. Later we noticed the sign pointing toward Cantwell, 2 miles along on the continuation of Denali Highway. I was curious what was there, so I drove in and it turned out to be a tiny place with no shops or much of anything. So much for Cantwell. We got back on the Parks Highway going south, heading toward our destination of Trapper Creek, a tiny spot 80 miles south on the Parks Highway. We hadn't listened to Harry Potter all along the Denali Highway since we wanted to focus all of our attention on the scenery, but we turned it on now. It's funny, but that road too had a lot of fall foliage and would have been worthy of quite a few shots if we hadn't just seen the Mother of All Foliage Road. Although I was tempted to stop a couple of times, we just ended up driving right through it.

The eighty miles went pretty fast and we came upon Mary's McKinley View Lodge, which I'd found in a guide book. This was listed at $75, $10 less than the Tangle Lakes Lodge, so we were a little nervous about whether there would be any toilets at all. When the friendly old woman asked if we'd like to see the roos first, we hesitated (Uh oh), but decided to go ahead, anyway. As it turned out, the room is more like a regular hotel, with a bathroom in the room and everything. In fact, there's a clear view of Mt. McKinley right from the outdoor hallway outside our room, although the peak was in clouds when we first got here. (We can almost see it from our window, but not quite.) While I paid, Walendo was browsing through some books, one called something like Alaska Not for Women, and when he asked about it, the woman said it was written by her mother, Mary Richardson, who came and settled this part of Alaska. She homesteaded here when the nearest road was 80 miles away, she said. She also said they were making a movie about it now. I wonder if we'll ever get to see it. Walendo noticed later that the daughter had written a bunch of children's books that were for sale there. He's thinking about getting one and asking her to sign it. He also noticed a poster of McKinley that was taken from this lodge, and I realized it was the same poster that had been in our room in the Sheep Mountain Lodge. Pretty neat.

Mt. McKinley

We settled into the room and read for a while. (I finally finished my book, which I hadn't been enjoying that much.) Then I started on this journal again. Around 7pm we went up to the lodge for dinner. Just as we left the room, Walendo noticed that McKinley was no longer in clouds, so he took a few shots. The dining room was a big open great room with big windows, some of which looked out onto Mt. McKinley, very nice. We had a simple meal -- burger for me and BLT for Walendo. During the trip we'd been fantasizing about the idea of getting a camper and driving around the country. At dinner, we came up with the idea of putting a journal of our activities on the Web each day and making kind of an event of it. We thought we could make it interactive by having people send in ideas of places to go, or voting on where we should go next. We could also take requests for local things to get for people and mail them to them. We'd paint the van in some distinctive way so people would know when we came through, and it would start conversations. I came up with the whacky idea of visiting all 50 states in alphabetical order, which would be a good stunt but kind of crazy. It's an interesting idea, doing a web daily travel guide. I wonder if you could get companies to sponsor you -- have a camera company give you a good digital camera to post the pictures, the camper company could sponsor you, who knows. Even if we didn't go for this, I'd love the idea of taking a year off and travelling around the country. How wonderful.

On the way back to the room, McKinley was in clouds again. It's amazing how quickly it changes. The sun is slowly going down just to the south of the mountains, creating some interesting light. As I've been finishing up this journal, Walendo keeps popping up from his reading to see if the clouds and the sun have created an interesting shot of the mountains. So far he hasn't seen what he's looking for. Maybe tomorrow morning. And now, on to our evening segment of Harry Potter.

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