July 16, Leaving the Alcan, Heading South

Friday July 16, Toward Denali: This morning the grey drizzle lessened. After 3 days of nearly constant rain, I was starting to imagine that our entire tour of Alaska would be wet with poor visibility. We were getting on each other’s nerves with little to do in the drenched outside, and all of us mulling around inside the trailer.

Our 19 foot long, boxy travel trailer is a pig to tow and maneuver. The Suburban strains to pull it. Forget about exploring little side roads; the question is always will there be enough room to turn around. But in the constant rain, we’ve had a warm dry place to spend our nights and a passable galley for making meals and warm drinks. John brought along a gasoline-powered generator that’s been indispensable. Public campgrounds don’t have electric hook-ups and our trailer makes quick work of the charged battery we get from a day’s driving. Because of our quiet little generator, I can write on the laptop in the evening.

We drove south on the Richardson Highway to Paxson. The Richardson connects Fairbanks to the southern port town of Valdez and is Alaska’s oldest highway. This part of the highway is gorgeous and finally the clouds lifted and we glimpsed the majestic mountain ranges on both sides of the road. The Alaska pipeline parallels the highway, so we got a good look as it meandered south, mostly elevated on supports but also diving underground at times.

At Paxson (perhaps a couple of people live there), we made a right turn onto the Denali Highway, an odd name for a dirt road that meanders 130 miles west to Denali National Park. It used to be the only way to the park, but now it’s open just during the summer months. A few miles in, we stopped at Tangle Lakes to camp. The lakes were surrounded by soft, spongy tundra. The tiny plants and lichens that form tundra are really interesting to walk on, and I tried to step gently. There were other areas with small willows growing so thickly that they formed an impassible, very scratchy thicket. We were too far north and too high for trees to survive, save in protected low areas.