Meghan and Ian: Even Further North

After our time in and around Anchorage, we headed further north, to Denali National Park. This was quite a disappointment. The park is home to North America's highest peak, but we could only get within about 85 km of it. There is a road that takes you well back into the park, right close to the mountain through all kinds of beautiful scenery and whatnot, but they won't let you drive on it. Only the first 15 miles. Ok, so how do you see the park? You take a bus. That's no problem, a lot of the National Parks have nice free modern buses to take you through the park. Oh, it's not free. Also, these are run-down old school buses, and to take them 85 miles into the park and back out, on their schedule, stopping when they want to, would be $85US for Meghan and I. Seems like a big money-grab to me. I thought the National Parks were supposed to be accessible to all. Only all rich people I guess. We opted to go for a hike instead. I did the "most strenuous" hike listed, which was a poorly maintained trail, with great views of the road and building. I was at the top and back down to the van in under 2.5 hours. Woohoo. Anyways, I'll end this rant here, I was just a little put off by the fact that in order to enjoy this park, you really have to be willing to part with a nice chunk of change. Time to move on to more enjoyable things.

Denali (aka Mt McKinley), North America's Highest Summit

From Denali, we continued north to Fairbanks, the northmost terminus of the Alaskan Highway. After staying for the night, and doing a nice hike at a bird sanctuary, we continued southeast to North Pole, Alaska. All the streets have names like "Kris Kringle Drive" and "Santa Claus Lane". There were even reindeer (in a pen). We of course had a little chat with the real Santa Claus, and told him that Meghan's young cousins have been behaving quite well so far, but that he should definitely keep an eye on Gavin.

North Pole, Alaska

From there, we continued on, southeast, passing Tok, picking up the Taylor Highway heading north to the Yukon border, then the Top of the World Highway heading east to Dawson City. We stopped for the night at a rest area, and shared some beer a super-nice solo cyclist named Ed. He's on his way back to Colorado after meeting up with an old friend in Eagle, Alaska. Sounded like quite the trip! Meghan and I; however, are rather fond of our mosquito-proof van.

Dawson City was kinda cool. It's very much the old-western town you imagine. The gold-mining industry has devastated the area all around the city. I had imagined that the old miners had panned in the creeks, and taken their gold with them, leaving the place relatively untouched. Nope. They dug up and dredged for 100m or more on each side of the creek, leaving huge piles of discarded gravel everywhere, as well as old machinery and whatnot. I tried my hand at panning for gold at Claim No. 6, now owned by the Klondike Visitors Association. I think everything there has been sifted and sorted several times over by now, and from what I gathered, none of the 15 or more people there during our 3-4 hours found a thing. We did make off with a tupperware container of wild raspberries, so it wasn't a total loss.