DENALI HIGHWAY

The Denali Highway cuts east to west (or west to east, I suppose) through central Alaska. It's 135 miles of pretty ratty dirt/gravel road, and the R.V. Rental place told us that the speed limit for their R.V.'s on this road was 25 MPH. Well, there's a good reason for that. At about 30 MPH, you wouldn't need a dentist to remove a molar - the pounding of the road would be more than adequate to shake all your teeth completely out of your head.

This picture shows a glacier (about 20 miles distant) decending out of the mountains and melting into the river in the valley. There were a number of views like this along the way, along with bogs, swamps, mountains, rivers, streams, and fields. Surprisingly, though, we didn't see any wildlife at all - no bear, caribou, or anything.

Zach had been bugging us about going fishing, and had purchased a book a few days back that purported to show every last fishing spot along every road that we planned to travel over the next couple of weeks. Since he had been pretty decent about the bus trip and the hike, as well as it being his birthday in a couple of days, we told him that we'd take the whole day to traverse the Denali Highway and that he could stop and fish wherever he wanted along the way. We probably stopped about seven or eight times at small and mid-size streams while he went splashing about in the ice cold water looking for fish (with the other lunatics doing the same thing). I stayed in the camper (if it was drizzling) or hung around outside reading my books.

I also learned why they tell you to be REAL careful when backing up the R.V. - in going over a small bump at a rest stop, I managed to bend the step leading up to the rear door. It took a bit of bending with a crowbar that night to push it back into working order.

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