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.