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Continuing the story I started here, here, and here:

We had to get some gas by the time we left the park, but with prices like these we decided not to fill the tank just yet. After Denali we took a brief side-trip to Talkeetna. If you’re not going to summit the mountain or hire a plane for a fly-over, you can skip this town in my opinion.

We traveled back down the Mat-Su valley then north of Palmer to Hatcher Pass and Independence Mine. Hatcher Pass actually cuts through the Talkeetna Mountains and would have been a shorter distance to drive except that it’s closed to traffic most of the year and even then is not suitable for driving an RV.

The area around Independence Mine is gorgeous with several hiking trails and a couple campgrounds. It was a lot less crowded than Denali. The park includes historical displays, a museum/gift shop, a few maintained buildings, and several ramshackle buildings.

We had another midnight hike this time on the Gold Mint Trail that parallels the Little Susitna River. The whole trail is nine miles one way up to the glacier that feeds the river so we hiked a small fraction of it. Near the trailhead it’s well-maintained and easy hiking. We saw several beaver lodges along the way and watched one beaver patrolling his domain.

The next day we spent some time in the park opting for a self-guided tour. Then with pans (loaned for free from the gift shop) we spent a couple hours panning for gold. The chances of finding any real gold are pretty remote, but it was still fun (and you are allowed to keep the gold if you find any!). Our hearts beat faster a few times when we saw fools gold sparkling in the pan but our dreams of paying for the trip were in vein. [smirk]

We really enjoyed the Hatcher Pass area, but the coolest part of the trip was yet to come….

Continuing the story I started here and here:

Denali is the only U.S. National Park with sled dogs. They help patrol the park in winter. The kennel is open to visitors and there are regularly scheduled demonstrations. We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours there.

Some of the dogs are more accessible than others and provide lots of photo ops like:

Gotta Laugh!

Gotta Scratch!

Gotta — hey! No tongues!

For me, it was the most enjoyable part of our visit to the park, but not necessarily the best part of the whole trip. Stay tuned….

But I did other cool stuff.

I have been to Alaska. Again — I was there two years ago at exactly the same time of year. That trip we stayed in the Kenai peninsula [posted here, here, here and sorta here]. This time we went to Denali and the Mat-Su valley. It was a ten-day odyssey that started on 12 June. Has it been a month already?

Day one was all travel. From central Florida to Anchorage is a looong hop.

Day two we got the RV, stocked up at the grocery store, and headed north. Although we had a basic framework for our time there, we left some flexibility. So we stopped at the Mat-Su Visitor Center. It often helps to chat up the locals. There is a war memorial and this sculpture next to the visitor center:

We had tentatively planned some canoing or kayaking for that afternoon so we continued on our way. We ended up renting a canoe from Tippecanoe in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. We chose a trek that required portaging between small lakes, and they had these nifty handles that make carrying the canoe pretty easy.

It was a windy afternoon — close to white caps on one of the lakes. I kept hearing this

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in my head. [I checked with my buddies, and it was just in my head....] But it was a good activity after spending a couple hours on the road and most of the previous day on airplanes.

That night we stayed at the Mat-Su RV Park. It’s clean and comfortable and had good showers — something we knew we would not have for the next couple nights.

Hitting the road the next morning we made a brief stop at a nearby fish camp. We had not made a reservation with a fishing guide — I’ll spare you the details why — and wanted to get some more information. Turns out, on the closest rivers where we could have fished without a guide were going to be closed for a few days for “escapement” — giving the salmon a chance to make to their spawning areas.

Oh well. We had other fun activities scheduled…