June 20, Fairbanks to Denali National Park—132 miles

Had breakfast at the Cookie Jar in Fairbanks, filled up with fuel (got 10 cents a gallon discount at Safeway so only paid $2.759. Isn’t it hell when you think $2.759 is a bargain) filled with water and hit the road. Before we left town I had to use the fire extinguisher to put out an engine fire on the pick-up truck that belongs to the man that sold Sandi the smoked salmon. Now we think we know how he smoked it. Drove through Nenana on the way to Denali, population 549. This town is so small their Art Center is a painted turtle. Today Nenana is the hub for the tug boat/barge shipping industry that traverses the rivers of the Interior, providing goods to numerous villages. But Nenana is perhaps best known for the Nenana Ice Classic, an annual event that awards cash prizes to the lucky winners who guess the exact minute of the ice breakup on the Tanana River. The contest has been a spring highlight throughout the state since 1917. The Ice Classic starts the end of February with the Tripod Raising Festival and culminates at breakup time in late April or May. When the surging ice on the Tanana River dislodges the tripod, a line attached to the tripod trips a clock located in a tower atop the Ice Classic office, thus recording the official breakup time. Last year the winners received over $303,000. If you want to enter next year just let me know. We got to Denali about 3:00 and found a place to park the motor home; took the Jeep and headed for the Park. Got to see the Visitor’s Center and a little of the Park before it closed but not much. We are scheduled for an 11 hour tour of the park tomorrow, starting at 7:15, on a school bus. Personal autos aren’t allowed in the park so the only way to see it is to pretend we’re back in school. Not looking forward to a whole day on a school bus but there are several stops where we get out of the bus. They have tours of varying lengths, 6 hour, 8 hour, 11 hour and 12 hour. We are doing the 11 hour tour to Wonder Lake. I think I said Watson Lake in an earlier post but that was the town with the signpost forest. This tour is to Wonder Lake. Hope to see Mt. McKinley and lots of wildlife.