Note: By loading this page you have already downloaded, or are currently downloading, the full size pictures. The thumb nails below are a shrunken (by your browser) version. Just click on a picture and the full size will be displayed in a new window (or new tab if your browser is set to use tabs for popup windows). You can close the full size picture window (or tab) and then click on another thumb nail, or you can continue clicking on the thumb nails without closing the full size versions. This action will close the previous one before it displays the new one.
Hi everyone. Once again I ventured into the Alaska frontier to visit "the brother". This year we decided to do a road trip into the Denali National Park. Even though Mark has lived in Alaska for over 25 years, and I have been visiting every year for over 15, neither of us had ever been to Denali. We passed by it a number of times, but never went in.
We made reservations to camp in the Teklanika River Campground, which is about 30 miles up the park road. There are a number of rules and restrictions for this campground. One big one is that there is a 3 night minimum stay. In addition, you are only allowed to drive into the campground and out. There is a checkpoint where the paved road ends at about mile 15.
All other travel must be by shuttle bus, which do run fairly often. So, in addition to the campground fee, we paid for a shuttle bus ticket. We made a reservation on the Wonder Lake bus, which goes to the end of the line at about mile 89 on the park road. We spent about 10 or 11 hours on that bus, but the sights made it worth while.
The weather for this trip was interesting. We experienced both sun and rain. It just so happened that our first full day at Teklanika, which was the day we picked to take the shuttle to view Mount McKinley, was a sunny day. In addition, for the first part of the day, there were no clouds around the mountain. This is an extremely rare occurrence. The shuttle bus driver said that only about 14 percent of those that come to view the mountain actually see it. She also said that she had been making that run every weekday since April (about 5 months) and had only seen it clear about 10 times herself. WE WERE VERY LUCKY !!!
The rain did keep us pinned to the camper for a couple of days. One of those days was our second full day at Teklanika. We did manage to visit the river in the afternoon when the rain slowed to a mist. Mark attempted fishing, but with no luck. The river was very silty, so he assumed that was the problem.
The day we left, the sun came out again. So at least we didn't have to break camp in the rain.
On the way back, we stopped at the Middle Fork of the Chulitna River. We found a pretty nice place to camp a little way from the highway.
This river was pretty clear, so Mark assumed he could catch some fish here. Unfortunately, the fishing gods had other plans.
We did have some fun with a crafty little fox though. It wondered into our camp, most likely following the smell of our dinner. We fed the little critter, and he repaid our hospitality by sneaking around and grabbing a gallon size baggie of candy munchies. He may have paid for that with a stomach ache.
That night and the next day produced major rain storms, so we were somewhat restricted to the camper again.
On the whole, the sun's timing was perfect, so we didn't care too much about the rain. It was a good and enjoyable trip!!!
For those that are interested...
These pictures were taken with my Panasonic DMC-FZ10 digital camera. It has 4 mega pixels with a Lumix lens. The camera is circa 2004. It has a 12x optical zoom and a 36x digital zoom. I have the digital zoom turned off. The millimeter equivalent of the optical zoom is about 35 wide to 450 telephoto. It is a continuous zoom, all with the single lens. It really pulls the images in close.
The resolution of the pictures when taken was 2304 by 1728. However, those chosen for this Internet show were reduced to one quarter their original size. This reduces the quality a bit, but the download time is reduced considerably. I still have the original versions on my computer.
This web page was created by hand, including all the sub-window processing. I did not use any web creation tools. After all, web programming is my profession.