Toking in Tok

Ok, not really “toking”, but we are taking a break for a few days.  “WHAT?”, some of you are saying…”thought you were in Anchorage!”  Well, that was three days ago…things change.

Technically we were in Wasilla, where we got our oil changed and stayed the night at Walmart…a fairly peaceful night I might add.

    

As we are leaving Walmart, we see this 1916 Model T sitting out there…when suddenly out of nowhere…

…comes this Radio Flyer!  Guess they were both getting ready for a weekend auto show…but we were headed north.

At Willow Lake Denali was uncovered again, but clouds were moving in quickly…I knew we would not see her again on this day.

It does not take long for this mountain to hide once again behind its cloak of clouds…by the time we got to the South View of Denali State Park (yes, there is a State Park too), everything is behind the clouds…I didn’t even bother taking a picture.

Between the South and North view of Denali at Denali State Park there is a rest area which is also the Alaska Veterans Memorial, a memorial to those Alaskan’s who fought for America in any of its wars…which for Alaska is pretty much WW2 and the wars since.  But Alaska even played a part in the American Civil War!

If you click on the above image, you should be able to read most of the information about how the north was using the Whaling Industry to help fund the war, and how the south sent a war ship into the Bering Sea to try and stop it…which was the only confederate ship to circumnavigate the world.  The monument had no fewer than a dozen of these information boards, along with many plaques, including four which featured the Alaskan’s who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor.

   

The rest area is part of the Beyer’s Lake Campground, and you can only stay overnight “legally” if the campground is full and you pay the $15 fee to camp.  We drove down into the campground to try and find a suitable site…having found a couple, as we were driving around to come back to the one we liked…well we came across a flooded road, and both of us did not feel like going over that patch of road again.  So I proclaimed that the park was full since it did not have a ADA acceptable campsite…paid for a site, and we went up to the rest area and camped for the night.  Needless to say, no one bothered us…not sure if putting the paid receipt on the passenger window and the ADA placard up on the mirror helped, or if frankly, no one cared to even check.  In the morning  saw one trailer down the way, and during the night it was so quiet and peaceful…a wonderful place to stay.

As we head north the next morning, the skies are not “clear”, but clear enough that I knew we would get some more pictures of Mt. Denali (such as the first picture in this post).

It does not take long before we get to the North View of the Denali State Park.  The view here is not nearly as good as the view one gets from the south view…if the mountain is not hidden behind clouds.  As I was pulling out of the memorial rest area I thought “maybe I should drive back to the south view this morning…”.  Well, I regret not doing that, the view would have been outstanding.

Not that the view from the north area is bad…it does give you a good look at this mighty mountain…the tallest in all of the Americas.  Was told by another passerby that around 30 climbers were trying to reach the summit on this day.  They were told that at the visitor’s center in Denali National Park.

As you continue north there is this pullout where you can get an even better picture of the mountain than at North View…that is where the first picture in this post was taken, and where the picture above was taken.  But I still wish I would have gone back to the South View Point…

In my next post, the trip to Denali National Park, and up to Fairbanks and on to Tok