Sunday, June 23, 2013
Our plan for today: Drive north from Glennallen to Paxson on the Richardson Highway (the one that goes to Fairbanks), turn left at Paxson and head West on the Old Denali Highway to Tangle Lakes CG (BLM) and dry camp (no hookups). The CG is about a third of the way along the old Denali Highway, most of which is gravel and pretty rough.
Don has been skeptical about this “Alaskan boondocking adventure” since I first mentioned it, not least because of my plan for 3 or 4 nights of dry-camping in isolated areas where there are known to be plenty of bears, but I finally got him to go along.
“Please, Don, we won’t have to go fast. I’ve given us 4 days to do only 135 miles. We can take our time. This is our ONLY real chance to be in the Alaska wilderness on this whole trip. Since we’ve decided not to take that excruciating bus trip into Denali NP, this is our one chance to see LOTS of wildlife in Alaska…I’ve read it’s out of this world! And we’ll be headed straight AT Mt. McKinley (Denali) while we’re on this road, so if it’s not obscured by clouds, we’ll have a great chance to actually SEE the mountain and experience its grandeur! Please!”
He capitulated.
A brief aside: Downtown Glennallen is completely torn up for road repairs right now. There is a 6 block stretch of very bumpy, loose gravel repair work along the main highway through the center of town. Really bad! The owner of Northern Nights RV Park in Glennallen, where we stayed, complained that although the work was supposed to be done long before July, the town isn’t going to be able to have its BIG July 4 parade with all the floats this year…some people, she explained, spend hundreds of hours and a lot of $$ making fancy floats every year for the parade, but the roads will still be torn up! What to do?? July 4 is a big deal in Glennallen!
At about 9:30 we set out, and took the wrong road at first, making our way verrrrrry slowwwwwwly through the bumps, ruts and heavy dust through town on the torn-up road. After 12 miles, we realized we were going the wrong direction, and were heading for Anchorage instead of Paxson. We retraced the 12 miles, bouncing through the dust on the torn-up road once again (was that #6?) then headed north on the Richardson Highway toward Paxson, the start of the Denali Highway.
Mind you, the OLD Denali Highway is the road that everyone used to have to take to get to Denali NP, before the Parks Highway opened in 1977 between Anchorage and Fairbanks, giving access to Denali National Park on a 2-lane paved road for the first time. So how bad could it REALLY be if everyone used to have to take it?
Got to Paxson…I had first considered that for the start of our “great adventure” in the wilderness on the Denali Highway, we should stay at the RV Park at the Paxson Lodge (an old roadhouse with a few RV spots…electric and water) the first night. While there, we’d fill our water tanks, empty waste tanks, and ready ourselves for 3 or 4 days without any hookups. The lodge, however, turned out to be decrepit! Glad we’re not staying there…I had already formed a Plan B because when I called ahead to the lodge yesterday, the person who answered sounded pretty indefinite about everything and pretty confused about everything, too. So I had already decided we’d bypass that place, heading straight onto the old highway. We had already filled our water tank halfway in anticipation of that strategy, thank goodness. (Plus, we always carry 4 one-gallon jugs of fresh water with us in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, just in case.)
The first 20 miles of the old Denali Highway is paved…not terrific, but paved. Some rough patches from permafrost heaves, but decent. After that, my god, it’s horrendous! They call this gravel? Yikes, it's the Rocky Mountains spread down as road bed! More like cobblestones combined with mountain rockfall. Bouncy is an understatement. 20 mph is too fast! 10-15 mph is all you can do, and sometimes you have to slow to 5 mph. Where in the world did anybody writing these darn guidebooks get the idea you could go 30-50 mph on this road? They must’ve been smoking something!
Took us almost 4 hours to go 30 miles, where we stopped and had chili at Tangle Lakes Lodge. Our overnight destination, Tangle Lakes campground, was another mile down the road…a BLM CG with 60 sites in two separate sectors, mostly back-in but some pull-throughs for big rigs. No hookups, but well-designed with nicely finished gravel roads and pads, a very very clean privy with vault toilets, and a hand pump providing potable water. Wonderful sites…the CG overlooks Tangle Creek and Round Tangle Lake – a large, gorgeous lake with mountains beyond. The mountainsides are scattered with many mini-glaciers of thick snow that haven’t yet melted. Beautiful setting. There are only about 10 other RVs and campers in here with us. Very quiet…nothing to be heard but birds and the nearby fast-flowing creek.
Don spoke with a single lady camping nearby in a truck camper who said she comes to Tangle Lakes to camp every year. She’s from Anchorage, a retired college professor. She told of how a grizzly had attacked and killed twin moose calves last year, angering the mother (cow) so much that the cow attacked the grizzly and beat him up badly enough that he took off after having eaten only part of one calf he’d killed. She also said that although the Tangle Lakes area is the on the migration route for a very large herd of caribou (usually migrating in August and September), she has seen caribou in the area this year for the first time in over 20 years. A good sign, she said.
Incidentally, because this area is on the caribou migration route, native populations have hunted and lived here for at least 10,000 years, according to archeological finds all around the Tangle Lakes region of Alaska.
When we had stopped for lunch, the folks who run the Tangle Lakes Lodge told us they have a moose (cow) with twin calves in their back yard right now. Wily critter, she disappeared the moment we went to the window to look. We were also told to be on the lookout at Tangle Lakes Campground where we were staying, because there’s been a moose cow sighted there also, with twin calves. She was nowhere to be found while we stayed there.
After settling in at our place, we grilled a steak and had rare ribeye and a fresh green salad with tomatoes. We then walked down a good footpath to Round Tangle Lake to watch our camper neighbors flyfish for native grayling. As we reached the shoreline, the man caught a nice fish of 10-12 inches and landed it beautifully. He released it after his wife took a pic. We cheered. The two of them were having a lot of fun, standing in thigh-deep water with waders on, flycasting into the pools where Tangle Creek emptied swiftly into the lake. Great setting. SWARMS of mosquitoes!
We hit the sack at 8:30, thinking we’d wake up early and get on the road at dawn to catch some wildlife. Hah! Slept like babies until 7:30 and finally pulled out at 9 am…early for us but not for the wildlife.
Alaska…and especially the “wild” Denali Highway…is for vistas, not wildlife. All day with nary a break and little variation, we stared at huge expanses of treeless tundra covered with low-growing willow scrub 3-5 ft tall, lush and velvety green, interwoven with creeks, streams, small and large lakes, rivers, and “kettles” filled with glacial water as far as the eye can see, in all directions. Mountains in the distance, in all directions. The vistas are especially grand when the Alaska Range comes into view, with its huge snow-covered mountains.
We spent 8 hours on the road today…not intentionally but because we could only go 10-15 mph most of the time. Whenever we got had a slightly smoother patch that allowed us to “speed” up to 20 mph, we’d hit washboard road and/or loose gravel and cobbles with large sharp stones appearing everywhere. If we didn’t hit the brakes fast enough, everything would vibrate and shudder violently. Ugly. This is an exercise in trying to get out without having our Rollin Home disintegrate underneath us.
At first, taking this road and getting off the beaten track was a great adventure. After 3-4 hours yesterday, we felt beaten to death. Today, before midday, we were ready to be done. And I mean DONE! We stopped at the McLaren River Lodge about 40% of the way along the Denali Highway for whatever…coffee, tea, who knows what. Support the local economy, I always say. Anything for a break from the road, the jouncing, the noise, and the endless tundra.
It was 11:30 am and a member of the staff was just lettering a sign showing what kinds of fresh pies they were serving today…7 kinds. Pretty enticing. But then we spotted a large batch of fresh homemade chili and decided to have bowls of chili for lunch, accompanied by owner Susie’s homemade wheat bread, which was scrumptious! Learned they were expecting 3 busloads of tourists between noon and 2, so we ate and left, hoping to avoid the stone-throwing, dust-raising 50-mph buses roaring by us on that dreadful road.
About 6 miles farther down the road, we came upon 2 bicyclists off their bikes on the side of the road who clearly had problems. Todd and his daughter Marley, a HS freshman, from Phoenix, were in Alaska on a 5-week cycling trip. Todd’s bike had just broken…the bolt holding his seat in place had broken. He could still ride the bike, but only if he stood and pedaled the whole way…and they were expecting to ride another 30 miles today to a place called Gracious House for overnight. He probably could not have made it, given the condition of the road and the hills that lay ahead.
We tried to find a bolt in our toolbox that would fit, and then tried solving the problem for Todd in other ways (a tent stake, or an awning stake maybe?), but nothing worked. So we loaded his bike and Marley’s into our rear storage compartment, with the wheels taken off, took the wheels off his tow-trailer loaded with their supplies and eased it carefully, tipped sideways, through the doorway of our Rollin Home, and plopped the 2 of them on our couch for the slow ride west to Gracious House. Marley promptly fell asleep for most of the journey.
About 5 miles down the road, coming at us was a large van carrying 6-8 bikes on its roof. I immediately started waving my arms at them to stop, hoping they would have a bolt for Todd’s seat. Hooray! They stopped, they had the extra part, which they gave to Todd at no charge. Very nice! Todd and Marley continued to ride with us another 10 miles to Gracious House, where they would stay, and fix the bike for the next leg of their journey.
I had read in several guidebooks that Gracious House had closed in 2011, but apparently it reopened this year. Todd had called them earlier and learned they were open for business. Supposedly Gracious House offered a few motel rooms, an RV park (no hookups, just dry camping), a full-service restaurant, a bar, WiFi, a bathhouse for tent & RV campers, etc. Don and I thought we might stay there too, because we were feeling very tired of the shake-rattle-and-roll routine on that road. Another 15 miles to Brushkana Creek CG (BLM) – estimated 1 ½ hours more time on that road -- was not appealing.
That is, until we drove into the yard at so-called Gracious House Motel & CG. When you think Gracious House, you think refined, pretty -- well, English-cottage-y. This place was flea-bitten, ramshackle, a dump if ever I saw one. The name, clearly, is less related to “gracious” as in lovely, refined than to “Oh, good gracious, what a pigsty!”
About 10 old buildings sat widely scattered around a rutted, dusty acre of very bumpy, hilly land, interspersed with rusty old equipment and junked cars. Restaurant – big sign saying CLOSED. No WiFi. A few so-called parking places for RVs, anything but “improved” sites…I couldn’t imagine getting any vehicle parking level at that place. Yikes! Yes, a bar…housed in a very rusty old trailer with wooden steps up to the door…hand-painted faded old plywood sign slapped on the side saying The Sluice. I despaired to think what the “bathhouse” looked like. I certainly understand people trying to make a living in the wilds of Alaska, but this was a rip, especially for the $20 they wanted to charge us for the use of the bathhouse for one night. No way.
The swarms of big mosquitoes that assaulted us as we unloaded Todd and Marley, their bikes and equipment were overpowering. Don & I decided to move along and head for Brushkana Creek CG after all. Added time on the road-from-hell going 10 mph seemed less bad in the context of possible accommodations at Gracious House.
By 6 pm, we were parked at beautiful Brushkana Creek, out in an open space but with spruce forests close by, on a level gravel pad, listening to the creek 20 yards away. Tuckered out. Mosquitoes, yes, but not nearly as many as there were at Gracious House. $12 a night. Good deal. And real wilderness.
Tonight we finally opted for one of our dried camper meals…add boiling water, stir, wait 10 minutes, eat. Chili mac with beef…I added some chopped sugar snap peas for crunch, then topped the whole deal with a few globs of sour cream. Delicious!
Dessert: An Effie’s Oatcake. Simple. Delish.
Breezes are wafting in our windows. We’ve swatted all the skeeters that snuck in today while the door was opening and closing. To bed!
I can hardly bear the thought of more hours of washboard gravel tomorrow. We still have 30+ miles to go before hitting pavement at the very end of this road. Ugh. It’ll probably take us at least 3 hours – maybe 4 -- to get to Cantwell at the western end of the Denali Highway.
Okay, I’m definitely conceding the point: My great adventure idea is for the birds. Don was right…and I’ll always have to eat a little crow! The old Denali Highway is torture. We’ve surely jarred loose every nut and bolt in our Rollin Home. Not a good thing. Enough to kill anybody, even the most patient traveler. Now we KNOW why all the idiots in pickups, old cars, large buses, roar along this road at 60 mph, no matter the danger or cost or discomfort…they can’t bear the thought of how boring it is to do it slowly and safely! So they create huge clouds of dust, throw rocks at us from all directions, swerve dizzily down the road because they have no control of their vehicles.
As an afterthought, we wondered if maybe the big tour buses going along at 60 mph on that dang road have such wonderful suspensions that the passengers just don’t FEEL any of that jouncing that we got. Do you think?
(PS We met a couple in Talkeetna a few days later who told us they had taken one of those bus tours on the Old Denali Highway, to McLaren River Lodge for lunch…the bus had indeed gone whizzing along at 50-60 mph. BUT it was not comfortable for the passengers…they were beaten to smithereens after the 3 hour trip in and the 3 hour trip back to Talkeetna. Ha! So much for fabulous suspensions in buses masking all that rough road!)
We’ve now “bought” ourselves an extra day or two to do something else, because we are only camping along this highway 2 nights instead of 3 or 4. Hmmm. Go into Denali, after all? Take a flight to the Arctic Circle and back from Talkeetna? Try to book a night or 2 at Kantishna at the end of the road in Denali, and fly in to stay there?
Tomorrow is another day…I’ll think about it tomorrow.
