Alaska Day 11, Up Close With a Moose

Day 11

Tuesday June 12

     Today was simply a travel day.   I dropped the keys to the rental at the Enterprise desk, checked in and worked through the surprisingly busy, but efficient security checkpoint.  This is in the waiting area of the Juneau airport…

      I certainly wasn't expecting to see a TIE Fighter pilot's uniform.   

     The flight itself is a little under an hour and a half.  Alaska Airlines guarantees your bags will be on the carousel within twenty minutes. With no one ahead of me at the Alaska 4X4 Rental counter, I was in my Cherokee and out the door quickly.  Why the 4X4?  All shall be revealed.  Let’s just say, eventually, I would be heading down a road mere rental sedans can not go.  I'm not joking.

      With a brief stop at Carr’s grocery store, I was on my way.  The rental agent said to expect five hours to get to Healy.  With construction, she was very close.

     The last time I did this, I stopped at a place called the Sheep Creek Lodge in Willow for lunch.  The food and the staff was just like I remembered.    

    As I approached mile marker 90. I hit my first construction stop.  I was about six vehicles back and settled in.  

    Imagine looking up and seeing the guy in the yellow safety vest at the front of the line.  He’s just standing there holding the red stop sign.  He casually looks over his shoulder as a moose crosses the road directly behind him.   Welcome to Alaska.

      We were behind the pilot car driving through the construction zone.  Otherwise I would have pulled off for a photo.  There’s a home here that’s been nicknamed the Dr. Seuss House.  You can't see the whole house from the road, but it does stick out over the trees.Click the link and you'll see what I mean.

    From the first Mt. Denali overlook.

    Such a great drive!

    Seen a few miles south of Denali National Park,this long abandoned hotel caught my eye.  The link has some interior photos as well.

    This was the point where I hit off and on rain for the next hour or so.  Seriously Alaska, enough with the rain.

     It was late in the afternoon when I pulled into Denali National Park. Private vehicles aren’t allowed on the main park road.  So, I booked my bus ticket for the morning’s adventure deep into the park.  This moose was just hanging out alongside the road into the parking lot.

    My home for the next few nights was the Denali Park Hotel in Healy.  I stayed here the last time and enjoyed my stay.  Besides, how can a place that uses a railroad car as an office be bad?

      Knowing the next day would be a long one, I stopped into downtown Healy and had dinner at a place called the 49^th State Brewery.   The food was quite good.  They have a dozen or so of their own craft beers.  I was curious about their Experimental Dark lager.  Imagine a lager with a little extra malt.

       Just to the left of the entrance is a bus.  It's the prop bus used for the film, "Into the Wild."

      The film is based on the book chronicling the last two years in the life of  Chris McCandless.  He graduated Emory University 1990 and went off to find himself.  He gave away the bulk of his money to charity and disappeared. He spent a year wandering through the west.  But, Alaska kept calling.  He eventually wound up north of Healy, Alaska.  He walked down an old mining road called the Stampede Trail and into the wilderness.  He came across a bus much like this one that had been long abandoned and was used by hunters.  He made it his home.  He lived off the land for four months before eating some poisonous plants.  Hunters found him in his sleeping bag three weeks after he died.  The actual bus is still out there.  To get there, it involves a lengthy drive down a road I definitely wouldn't take a rental car and then a long hike that includes two river crossings.  You can see a profile the show 20/20 did on Chris McCandliss here.

Coming up,

When a lush green field isn’t exactly a lush green field