Day 37 Teklanika Campground,Denali National Park June 8 2013

Right after leaving Fairbanks.

Saturday we drove from North Pole to Denali, National Park. We left the Campground at about 9:00 in the morning. We saw a lot of beautiful scenery on the way to the park. We made lots of stops on the way to take pictures. The road was in fairly good shape until about 10 miles from Healey. We had been warned that it would be bad, and it was. The frost heaves made the highway rolly-polly.

Really bad frost heaves.

 There was a section that was under construction and was gravel. It probably lasted for 7 or 8 miles. So much for my wash job. After we hit the pavement again, it started to rain very hard. This kind of cleaned the truck and trailer, but clean turned out to be short lived.

This really dirty the truck.

We stopped at one of the rest stops and Cindy got this picture of the railroad that goes into the Park. She also got a shot of the rapids on the Nenana River, that she went down years ago.

Cindy went down this river on a raft, probably 20 years ago.

Stopped by the Nenana River

We made it to the Denali entrance and had to sign in for the campground and bus pass. After that we had almost 30 miles to go to the campground.

 The first 15 miles was paved, but turned to gravel After the Savage River Guard Station. The rain we had earlier had turned some of the road into mud. Well, you can guess what the truck and 5er look like. They are as bad as when we went to the Arctic Circle, but this time the trailer looked just like the truck. We did get to see this Caribou on the way.

 After we got parked, I scrapped the really heavy mud off the front of the trailer so the mud wouldn’t dry and make it that much harder to clean later. There is no water in this campground, so I can’t do anything about the dirt.

Drove all the way from Utah to see a seagull on a car, begging.

We then went and looked at the large what we thought was a river bed going by the campground. We found out later that the small streams that intertwine are called braided rivers. The large areas we caused by the glacier receding, and not by flooding. We also saw that the glacier fed rivers are filled with much more silt than a spring fed stream. The spring fed streams are nearly clear while the glacier fed one look milky or muddy.

A good example of a braided river.

One of the rest stops on the way to the campground.

I just thought this looked neat.

We decided to walk around the campground and Cindy found some little flowers in bloom. We found out they are Called Northern Anemore or Windflower. One of the rangers told us that these flowers are the first sign that spring is on the way.

Parked at the campground.

Thanks for visiting.