Denali to Seward

We awoke to sunny skies, had a leisurely start to the morning, hit park stores for a few more items.

Moose tracks on the path, a hint of what was to come.

We left the site at about 10:00, then ran into a roadblock in the campground. A moose cow and calf were grazing on willow shoots among the campsites, and traffic was halted.

Once they moved on, we headed off to the dump and fill station as we had been dry camping and needed to prepare for the next stop which also would be dry, camping, not weather.

It was a fairly long day's drive once again, but I wanted to get to the Kenai peninsula.

The weather was variable. We hoped we might see Denali, but while it was sunny, there were enough high clouds to cover it. We saw its bottom, though. Friends we've made on the trip who were camped near us took a shuttle bus ride into the park today and did see the mountain. Timing (and location) is everything.

We had sunny skies earlier, but the clouds have set in cutting off the tops of the peaks.

We had a couple of opportunities to see Denali on this drive, but it wasn't to be.

There was an interesting display at the southern Denali viewing point with a large panorama photo just below the view showing what you would see if it was clear.





 
Nature can be tough. We saw the wolf and caribou the day before, and one of them wasn't going to survive. Friends called us while we were dodging Anchorage traffic to say that a grizzly had taken the calf we watched in the morning, right in the campground, not far from our campsite. The people at the park claim they don't intervene with nature (much?), but they did remove the calf; we didn't hear what happened to the bear.

We drove through Anchorage only stopping for fuel. This was Memorial Day. I had read warnings about driving the Seward Highway against traffic at the end of a weekend, so with some trepidation, we headed down the highway, watching all the traffic heading back to town, coming our way.

This is driving along the scenic Turnagain Arm which we had to drive around to get to Seward.

Lots of boats heading back, Some big boats.

In this section of highway, there were warning signs lowering the speed to 45 mph, and many cars parked along the road, crowds doing something in the water, filling coolers with who knows what.

We have learned since that they were fishing for Hooligan, a smelt, sometimes called candlefish because they have so much oil they can be burned for light. They are caught by dip nets (for Alaska residents only).



We finally landed in Seward. The city has many campsites on the waterfront. There were many campers here when we arrived, probably taking an extra day beyond the holiday weekend.

The weather was less than stellar, but we're here, and we're staying, although wondering where else we should be.

Miles today 371, grand total 4450.