Into the Wild and the Summit of Mt. McKinley/Denali!!

Before I get to the good stuff, how do you politely say.......the write ups about these small towns on the Parks Highway from Fairbanks to (and including) Healy just aren't what they are made out to be.  And some of the write-ups about the campgrounds don't appear truthfully.  Nenena - cute visitor center, but most everything else was disappointing.  The farmers market had 3 vendors.  It was just "tired".

Down the road.  We are staying at Tatlinka Trading Company Campground - not that bad. The best gift shop ever. Makes you wonder what's up. Mystery solved.  Tour buses start rolling in. Must be a paid stopover for restrooms, coffee and shopping.  We have good sites that overlook the river which make life good.

We drive down to Healy to check out McKinley RV Park - and that's a disappointment. Close together and unlevel looking. Not enough air there for us to breathe!


June 25 - Day 45 has got to be the best day ever!  We took a flight seeing tour through adventure@northernalaska.com   to the summit of Mt. Denali (formerly known as Mt. McKinley).  I think I will just let the pictures tell the story, but it did seem like at one point in time we were in heaven. I'm sure there were angels there, somewhere!  Our flight was close to being cancelled due to some area rain showers, but our pilot seemed to have the freedom to look all around and find a path through the clouds.

A view of the Teklanika River. We will camp here for 3 days when we enter Denali.

Pretty cool that you go up so high you have to wear oxygen!

First view of the summit of Mt Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. Formerly known as Mt McKinley.

Looks like we're in heaven!

Got some good pictures of Wickersham Wall. In 1903, James Wickersham recorded the first attempt at climbing Denali, which was unsuccessful. He hit a wall.

We were also able to view the Upper Base Camp, located at 16,000'. I tried to take pictures of the camp - but basically it looks just like a bunch of little raisins in the snow down there!

You might have to zoom to see the camp!  How awesome to actually see it though!

You may have heard of Christopher McKandless - Now I Walk Into the Wild.  We flew over the bus that is still in the woods where he stayed and where he was found dead.  We had about 6 seconds to snap a picture in the bumpy plane, but here you go!  Fascinating story.

Interesting that you can see some folks walking around and parked next to the bus. Our pilot told us that this bus has become a problem because so many people want to hike to it, but it's dangerous and they get stranded. A lot of resources are spent rescuing tourists from here.

Our pilot Alex was awesome.  We made him pose with one of our infamous Shiner beers!

Cheers to our great pilot Alex!