Saturday, June 7, 2008

Alaska trip - Days 15 to 18

Greetings from Denali National Park. I am finally in an RV Park with a strong enough wi-fi signal to continue the blogging process. Blogs need to be written while online and that takes a certain level of wi-fi strength.

After our day from road hell on Tuesday, we drove from Tok to Fairbanks. We set up in Fairbanks at the Rivers Edge RV Park for 3 nights. This is a really great park with good cable TV (we can watch CNN again) and full hookups. Only the wi-fi was weak. While we were here, a lot of housekeeping issues needed to be attended to. Rosie did a large load of laundry and scrubbed the floor of the camper. I repaired some things that had fallen off the walls and the dinette seating from the rough road. I got the truck serviced with new oil, etc. On the way out earlier today, we used the RV Wash to try to clean the camper exterior.

Fairbanks is like any mid-size town in the lower 48. Nice streets, shopping malls, lots of trees and parks. The city is surrounded by rolling hills with more trees than you can count in a lifetime. We took a couple of day trips out of town in pursuit of fish; with very limited success. All I have to show for my $145 license so far is a little rainbow trout out of a stocked lake. All the rivers are low and muddy. I am beginning to wander if the only way to enjoy the Alaska fishing adventure that is so heavily advertised is to spend a $1,000 or more on a float plane and a guide. That is certainly not in our budget. Well, we will see how it goes as we get further south.

The caravan of 17 RV's rented by the group from Denmark that we met in Ft. Nelson showed up in our park in Fairbanks. I can't imagine what it would be like to try to keep a group that large organized. We met some of our other neighbors in the park. Nice folks from Wisconsin, Virginia and other parts of the lower US.

Today we traveled about 125 miles to Denali RV Park; about 7 miles north of the park entrance. We drove down to the park Visitor Center and encountered a moose grazing roadside. Rosie got some pictures which were sent out separately. Unfortunately we were on the south side of the north bound moose, so the view is not the most inviting. We have our tickets for the 8 hour tour of Denali National Park tomorrow. The RV Park where we are staying offers pet sitting services (they will take Sammy out for 2 or 3 walks while we are gone). The tour bus leaves on a 66 mile journey at 7:30 am and we can get off anytime to hike or sightsee, then get on the next bus that comes along. We will be bringing our own lunch and water. Hopefully we will see much beauty and many animals. We are scheduled back about 3:30 or 4:00 pm.

We will report on our adventure tomorrow evening.

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