Day 36

No rain! Woo Hoo! It was cloudy but at least it wasn’t raining. We didn’t have any activities planned so we did household chores until lunch time. After lunch we drove to the Denali Highway, about 10 miles from where we were camping. The highway is a cutoff that goes over to the Denali Park area but only 20 of the 134 miles are paved. We were only going on the paved part.

As the road climbed, the scenery changed pretty quickly from spruce forest to alpine tundra. There were lots of lakes and streams surrounded by mountains but it wasn’t all that scenic because of the clouds. When the pavement ended, Jan wanted to continue on a little farther so we went about 7 more miles. The funny part was the gravel road was actually better than the paved road. The paved road had a number of frost heaves and pot holes which made it like a bumpy roller coaster.

And then the skies cleared and the sun came out! The views that were so-so earlier were now great and Jan got to take some pictures. On the drive back to the campground, we got to see why “Mileposts” cited this portion of the Richardson Highway as a scenic drive. We didn’t get to see any of this yesterday! The lake we’re camped on is miles long – we didn’t see that yesterday either. When we got back to the trailer, Jan got to go on a nice bike ride – he was happy about that.

We picked up two good size pieces of firewood at one of the Provincial Parks in Canada with the intent of using it somewhere along the way in Alaska. We’ve since learned you’re not allowed to bring firewood from Canada into Alaska and vice versa. We weren’t asked, we didn’t tell. Every time we’ve been in a park where we could have campfires, it’s been raining. Well, today was the day – I was going to get my campfire. The campground was beautiful, it had a fire ring, and the sun was shining. One thing we hadn’t considered about our illegal Canadian wood was it’s been in the bed of the truck all this time and, of course, it’s been raining. It took a lot of newspaper, a couple of douses of gasoline but, after three tries, we had a fire. It was kind of a lame fire but a fire none the less. The wet wood was pretty smoky but at least it kept the mosquitoes at bay. Poor Jan, the things he goes through when I have a bright idea.

As I’m writing this, the skies have opened up once again and it’s pouring rain. We consider ourselves blessed to have had such a nice day.