Driving the Denali Highway

Jen and I decided to drive from Palmer up to Paxson and across the Denali Highway to Cantwell and then back to Palmer. This trip was just over 500 miles. We took the tent and sleeping bags with the intention of stopping and sitting up camp for the night. We had never made the drive, but heard it was an awesome trip.

We got up at 5 am and hit the road. Here is a link to a map of the trip.  Map of trip

The Denali Highway is about 135 miles long with almost 100 miles of gravel road. The highway goes from Paxson to Cantwell. This used to be how visitors reached Denali Park until the Parks highway was built in the early 70's. The highway is closed in the winter and usually reopens by the middle of may. This is a great trip to take and spend a few days fishing and wildlife viewing. There are Princes lodges buses that make the trip and a lot of motor-homes. There are a couple of lodges to spend the night, but very limited services.

This is a photo of the highway just a few miles outside of Paxson. Paxson has a small lodge and sometimes has gasoline. Don't always count on them having diesel or gasoline.

Photo looking down into the Mclaren river valley.

The Mclaren Glacier

Took most of the trip to finally find some Caribou.

This lake is was just absolutely beautiful!

Jen and I kept driving all day in the August light, which in Alaska is close to 15 hours. We ended up getting to the end of the Highway before the end of the day, so we just pushed on home. Made for a long day, but such an awesome trip.

Hatchers Pass Hike to Summit Lake

Summit Lake state recreation area is at about mile 19 of the Hatchers Pass road. If coming up from the Palmer side you turn off the pavement just before reaching the Independence mine recreation area.

There is a trail around Summit Lake, and along the bluff above, and west, of the lake. The views from the bluff viewpoint are outstanding, including the Willow Creek Drainage, the Susitna Valley, and the western arc of the Alaska Range.

Summit Lake is a small cirque lake, or tarn, reaching a depth of 20 feet. This cirque was the beginning of a long-gone, alpine glacier. The surrounding terrain is all glacially carved.

Arctic Man

Okay for those of you who don't know what Arctic Man is, it is like Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, just with snow machines. All of the weeks festivities lead up to race on Friday (weather permitting). This race is where a skier or snowboarder takes off at about 5800 feet and drops to 1700 feet in less than 2 miles and then meets up with a snowmachine and a tow rope. The snowmachione pulls the skier up a hill about 2 more miles at speeds of around 90 mph. The skier then lets go of the rope and drops another 1200 feet to the finish. It is a must see.

 There is an old saying that it takes all kinds to make the world go round, well we definitely found the "all kinds". I think next year we will get a bit better spot than where we were located this year, down 6 spots from the bar and right next to the main road leading from the camps to the bar, lets just say we didn't get much sleep LOL.

Neither one of us knew just quite what to expect, until we saw motor home and tent city come into view, then visions of Woodstock rolled into our head...... As you can see by the first picture people didn't have much faith in the bathroom facilities and brought their own ;o)

Necessities.. snowmachine and porta potty.














The sunsets where gorgeous, and the nights were cold














Our trailer, is the black one in the picture, the bar was right across from the the blue tent and the sign you see in the distance.













One of my favorite pictures.













Us by the Alaska pipeline.

Maybe this should be a new races at arctic man (falls under the all kinds category), this was on top of the mountain and apparently the guy in the chair rode like that all the way up there, insane!

Too many snow machiners, in one place you know there is trouble, quick call out the national guard!!

There were fireworks battles almost every night we were there

Apparently anyone can do this event even a 6'4" Ewalk

They are traveling at roughly 80 miles an hour, can you believe it?

Pick up spot, the skier comes from one valley and the snow machiner comes from the other, the snow machier, throws the skier a tow rope and off they go, 80 plus miles and hour, until they hit the drop off point.

Our camp is down in the middle.

I did take my vintage 1977 Kawasaki Sno-jet to compete in the vintage hill climb. Unfortunately the jet was too rich and I had a hard time keeping it running. I did make the race but just a bit too boggy to finish well.

The inside of our trailer worked out pretty nice with the help of a Mr buddy heater.

Chena Hot Springs

Jen bought me a new camera for my birthday, and because I work midshifts on my birthday she gave it to me early. I think the real reason though was the fact she wanted pictures on our trip to Chena Hot Springs.

Saturday morning we got up early and drove up the parks highway to Fairbanks and then north to the Hot Springs. We took several pictures on the way and we stopped at the Ice carvings for a few pictures. We spent several hours in the pool and finally got out just after 10pm. The temperature outside was about 5 degrees. The pool is an outside pool so you can imagine how cold the walk was from the pool to the inside dressing room. We had a blast.

On Sunday we got up and decided to take an alternate route back home. We drove down the Richardson highway to Glennallen and then cut back over to Palmer. Trip was just over 800 miles and we took just under 300 photos. I am still learning how to work the camera, but some of the photos turned out pretty good. I am throwing out a few and will put some more up later.

Take care.



Richardson Highway.














Parks Highway













Ice slide













Ice Carving

Ice carving.

Ice bar at Chena Hot Springs

Ice Alter at Chena Hot Springs

Sunrise on the big one.