Good news and bad news today. The bad news is that lightning started a fire near Trappers Creek (about 100 miles south of us) last night about 9:00 p.m. This morning when we got up the smoke was so thick it looked like a fog had set in and the air smelled like a smoldering campfire. The good news is that we had exchanged our original bus ride tickets for Thursday from Friday (today) so we lucked out again. More bad news however, because of the smoke we could only see a few hundred yards down the road so seeing Mt. McKinley was out of the question. We had such a good day yesterday however that we are OK with it. Heard tonight that several thousand acres had burned and was still out of control. The Denali N. P. has a dog sled team and provides free tours of the kennels with a presentation by a ranger. They still use dog sleds to patrol the original 2 million acres of the Park (the park now is 6 million acres). When it came time for the dogs to perform they just went wild barking and jumping. They were so excited to get hooked up to the sled and run it was amazing. The ranger said she didn’t have to look at her watch; the dogs would let her know when it’s time for their run. They hooked them to a sled and they were off like a shot. They are really fast so you better hang on tight. Dog sledding looks like great fun and would be a blast to do until you remember that it could be 40 below zero or more when you do it. That would sort of take the fun out of it. Headed on south from the Park and drove into Talkeetna, which is a tourist town with a neat name and surly clerks. It’s another very small town, actually most towns in Alaska are, and the tourists were thick as flies. We couldn’t get out of town fast enough. Drove on to Wasilla to see the Iditarod race headquarters. Watched a very interesting movie about what goes on behind the scenes of an Iditarod race and settled in their parking lot for the night.
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