Day 75 - Monday 8/31/2026 - Denali National Park - Quiet Day 2

Well it did snow, but not four inches.  We woke up to temps in the mid-30s and snow, but it was melting as fast as it fell.  We all enjoyed watching it and were glad we were snug in our ER-150!  It was a peaceful, quiet, still day - we don't get those very often, and we loved it.

This is what was left at around noon. 

Tomorrow is going to be sunny and warmer, so we are waiting to begin exploring until then.  Hot vegetable beef soup for dinner was a great warm way to end the day.  Hope you all had a happy Monday!

Day 74 - Sunday 8/30/2026 - Denali National Park

We woke up this morning to partly cloudy skies and temps in the 40s.  We drove about 100 miles to Denali National Park and Preserve, then another 30 miles to our chosen campground deep in the park.

When we were driving out of last night's campsite we could see that some of the mountains around Mt. McKinley were visible, so we drove the short distance back to the Denali Overlook South to see if there were better views.  It was beautiful there, but Mt. McKinley was shrouded in clouds and not to be seen (so glad we saw it yesterday),

so we got back on the road headed to Denali National Park. 

The drive was incredible - mountains were all around us and the trees and shrubs were already showing fall colors. 

We took our time and enjoyed the scenery.  We even saw a big moose along the way,

as well as some young Dall's sheep way up high on the side of a mountain!

Once we arrived at the park,

we headed to check in for our campsite and to get our bus passes.  We also topped off our fresh water tank one last time.  Then we stopped at the Visitor Center to get our passport stamp for Denali and check out the exhibits.

 

 

We watched their video about the sled dogs that live and work in the park.  It was very interesting and we wanted to go pet the dogs, but it was raining and they were soaked (and probably a little smelly).  Maybe we can do it on the way out.

We saw our only bear of the day at the Visitor Center too.

We checked out the activity board to see what is going on at the campgrounds (lots of ranger led activities at each of the three open campgrounds),

and we saw a sign they had posted about a missing calico kitty named Cali (no relation to our Callie). 

We hope someone finds her!

Because the campground we chose (Teklanika Campground),

is at mile 29 on the park road, we were able to drive ER150 much further into the park than other private vehicles and RVs (which can only go as far as mile 15 at the Savage River).  But it does require us to stay a minimum of 3 nights at our campground to afford this luxury (no problem with us!).  The only way to go further into the park from there is by bus offered by the park service.  The buses currently only go up to mile 43 because of a landslide that destroyed the road a while back.  A new bridge and road is currently being built to repair that area and is scheduled to be open and drivable sometime in 2027.

 

Once we passed mile 15 at the Savage River we had the road mostly to ourselves.  The speed limit is 35 mph for most of the drive but like usual we averaged about 3.5 mph for almost the entire way, looking for wildlife and admiring the beautiful landscape.  What an incredible drive it was too!

We stopped and watched four pretty Rock Ptarmigans just a few feet off the road (very camouflaged).  They are still brownish-colored now, but will turn gorgeous all-white for the winter. They have feathers on their legs and feet so they can walk in the snow - how cool is that!

Then we saw six caribou feeding on the side of a hill. 

They all had huge antlers, and the males' antlers were red!  It was amazing! 

We agreed that they must have very strong necks to hold up that much weight.  We looked it up, and male caribou shed the blood-rich velvet on their antlers in the fall, and they appear red until the blood dries and wears off.  We had no idea about this.

We came to a sign that said Sheep Crossing, with a little clock on it. 

The ranger had explained to us that if you arrive at the sign between the top of the hour and 10 minutes after the hour, you have to wait until 10 minutes after to continue driving.  Somehow this is a traffic regulator, but we thought it was funny.  It was 15 minutes after the hour when we passed by, so we didn't have to wait and there was no traffic anyway.

It began to rain a little more, so we drove on to the campground and found a spot for our four night stay at site #45. The park rules state that we are not to move our vehicle once parked at our campsite until we depart our stay with them.

This rather large snowshoe hare was enjoying our site with us. 

We can take the green transit bus from the main road in front of the campground to anywhere else in the park they serve.  We have reserved seats on the bus tomorrow at 10:45 am, but the weather forecast currently shows it starting to snow around midnight tonight, continuing through the day tomorrow and accumulating up to 4 inches!  ⛄ We're not sure whether we will take the bus tomorrow or not - we might just stay and enjoy the day in the snow! 

We were chilly ❄ when we got set up, so we had some hot cocoa to warm up.  Becky and Callie snuggled up for a nap.

We are going to bed early so we can wake up and watch it snow!!

Favorite creek name:  Bothersome Creek

Today's journey: 

Days 72/73 - Friday and Saturday 8/28-29/2026 - Denali State Park

We woke up to yucky rain on Friday and it never stopped all day.  We went ahead and paid for two more nights in the K'esugi Ken campground in Denali State Park and settled in.  It was cold and wet and the perfect weather for napping!  We usually dry camp, so we are generally cautious about using our electric appliances like the stove and oven too much (rainy, cloudy weather = no solar power).  In this campground we have electricity, so we made some cookies and spaghetti for dinner, and spent some time reading about the different hikes we can take in Denali when we get there on Sunday.  

Saturday started cold and cloudy, then the clouds broke and it was sunny and beautiful in the afternoon.  We decided to go visit the town of Talkeetna.  Mike went to check the pressure in the tires before we left, but the air gauge on ER150's air fill hose broke, and wouldn't read the pressure or inflate the tires correctly. We fixed it with spare parts he brought along.  His planning really paid off, because we have a tire that is losing a little bit of air daily and we wouldn't want to drive on it without knowing that it was always safely inflated.

It took a little over an hour to drive about 55 miles to Talkeetna since there is some road construction on the way.  We were told there are two seasons in Alaska - winter and road construction season.  We have encountered road work almost daily, but appreciate that they are always trying to keep up with the damage caused by the cold.

Talkeetna is a cute little town, quirky and artsy and crowded with lots of people.  Many are from cruise ships docked in Seward who take the train excursion to visit Talkeetna. We caught our first glimpses of Mt. McKinley

 

on the Talkeetna Spur Road.  Once in town we walked down to the Riverfront Park to try to catch a better look at the mountain - we could see the top peeking out above of the clouds (it doesn't show well in the picture).

 

We looked in a few of the shops but didnt buy anything (not normal for us!). We really wanted to try the famous spinach bread at Talkeetna Spinach Bread, but they were closed (bummer).

  We decided to grab a bite to eat at the Fairview Inn restaurant.

We tried their Arctic Winds Pilsner

and shared their specialty entree of fish (halibut) and chips,

 

Then our waiter Danny tempted us with a mixed berry rustic pie with ice cream and locally produced birch syrup dessert.  We took the bait.

 

It was all very yummy.

We left Talkeetna and headed back towards our campground.  We stopped to top off with diesel and then pulled into the Denali Viewpoint South turnoff, where there are unobstructed views of Mt. McKinley and the many mountains that surround it. 

This was a map showing the height of the mountains:

It was incredible to see!  It's said that fewer than 30% of visitors to Denali ever see the mountain due to constant cloud cover.  I guess we were lucky!  We had a fun day enjoying the sunshine and clear skies.  

Once we got back to our campsite, we started to prepare for our upcoming 4-night stay in Denali National Park (at Teklanika River campground) beginning on Sunday. We made sure all of our batteries (camera, solar generators, phones, computers, tablets, etc.) were charged to 100%, our tanks were emptied, and fresh water was filled.  We won't have access to electricity or fresh water once we enter the campground, and according to Park rules, ER-150 will have to remain parked in the campground during our entire stay.  We do have a bus pass that allows us to get on and off the green transit bus for the duration of our stay to visit other parts of the park and hopefully see lots of wildlife!

It looks like the weather is about to drastically change 😲. This is the weather forecast for our campground in Denali National Park for the first couple of days of our stay:

Looks like we will need to dig out our down blanket from oh-my-gosh wherever we stored it???  

Updated weather forecast Sunday morning: 

Callie is getting worried.  

More about that later...

Favorite road name:  Fiddlehead Fern Lane

Saturday's journey: 

Days 70/71 - Wednesday and Thursday 8/26-27/2026 - To K'esugi Ken Campground

On Wednesday we both woke up still feeling under the weather, and decided to stay in Anchor River State Recreation Area for another day.  It was a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures in the 50s.  We rested and ate homemade freeze-dried chicken noodle soup, which was sure to make us feel better.  We took advantage of the sunshine and dried our waders and wader boots,

and we cleaned the cat beds and let them air in the sun all day.  

We woke up Thursday morning to temperatures in the 40s!  It was cold with the windows open!  The kitties were snuggling and weren't ready to give up their warm spots.  It was another sunny day, so we had our coffee and tea and packed up for the trip north through Anchorage and onward toward Denali. We drove about 350 miles, ending up at the K'esugi Ken Campground.  

We stopped one last time at Cook Inlet to get pictures of the Ring of Fire mountains/volcanoes on this exceptionally clear day, and to say goodbye.  We will miss this place.

Usually we have only been able to see one or two of them (the volcanoes) at a time, if any.  It was really spectacular to see them all, but hard to capture with a phone camera. 

We got on the road and made it to Soldotna, where ER150 seems to automatically stop every time we go through this area.  We picked up the fuel filter kit we had ordered from O'Reilly Auto Parts, and a replacement air filter as well.  We loaded up with diesel and some snacks and topped off ER150's 90 gallon fresh water tank courtesy of the folks at the Circle K, then made a quick trip to Fred Meyer for some supplies.

While I was in Fred Meyer, Mike had met two couples from Switzerland in the upper parking lot.  They were visiting Alaska in Adventurer Truck Campers and enjoying their visit and had been to many of the same places we had been.  They had many questions about ER150 and Mike gave them each our sticker with the blog information.  Maybe they are reading this right about now. :)

As we continued our travels we turned off Seward Highway at Portage Glacier road, and saw several different viewpoints of the glaciers

and some lakes in the area.  The visitor center was closed, so we went through the tunnel behind it beside Portage Lake

 

headed toward Whittier.  The whole area was stunning! 

We then turned around and headed back toward Anchorage.

Before we got to the Turnagain Arm pullout we began noticing a lot of cars and people lining up looking at the water at a few of the pull-offs along the side of the road.  We had already noticed that the tide was extremely low, in some places we could hardly see the water at all.  Then Becky remembered that this is where you can see the bore tide, and sure enough, we saw a huge wave headed south, with several surfers already riding it, and more waiting for it to get to them.  A bore tide is a powerful tidal wave where the leading edge of an incoming high tide forms a visible wall of water rushing up a shallow, narrowing river or inlet against the current.  At Turnagain Arm, the bore tide can reach 6 to 10 feet tall, travels at 10 to 15 miles per hour, and is famous for long-distance river surfing.  We weren't able to stop, but we snapped a few photos out the window.  It was really cool, and kinda bizarre to see and think about!

As we passed through Anchorage it began to get cloudy, then started to drizzle rain by the time we arrived at our campground, which is within the Denali State Park.  As we passed the turnoff to Talkeetna we saw a big beautiful moose eating flowers on the roadside!

It became pretty dark and hard to see, so we are anxious to see the area tomorrow.  We got settled in to our camp spot (#35) at K'esugi Ken Campground (really nice area) and didn't last long before we were snoozing away. 

Besides the moose, we had two bald eagles fly directly over us today, and we saw four sandhill cranes and several swans.

Favorite place name: Gigglewood Lakeside Inn

Thursday's journey: