45 - The Denali Highway July 11 & 12

We just took 2 days to drive the Denali Highway from West to East. It's 134 miles long and it's mostly gravel. Well, mostly gravel AND potholes. For most of it, we didn't go above 20mph. Sometimes slower, sometimes a little faster. If you're in a hurry, forget it. HOWEVER, if you want to see the most magnificent, untouched mountain and glacier vistas, this is where you want to be. In the summer at least.

We drove north from Palmer. We stopped in Talkeetna, AK, supposedly it was the town that the show Northern Exposure was modeled after. We drove through kind of quickly. Yeah, it's a cute little town with lots of interesting shops and cafes, but it was full of tourists. I couldn't figure it out until we passed a big parking lot of tour buses with "Princess Cruises" splashed on the sides. I guess they bus them to Alaska's interior? anyway, we left. It was worth it to drive through. We never got out of the car though

To be completely honest, neither Adam nor I had ever heard of the Denali Highway. We were just trying to get back to Canada and on to Inuvik. We were going to spend some time in Denali National Park. We did not have reservations and everything was booked. I feel like we got the Denali experience and then some by driving the Denali Highway. Crazy as it sounds, we NEVER saw the mountain Denali. It was so foggy and overcast that we couldn't see it. We drove into Denali State Park by chance. We saw signs pointing to lookout points with supposedly great views of Denali, but too much fog and rain. One fact I thought was interesting is that Denali is the tallest mountain in North America. It is also taller from base to summit than Everest. Everest is sitting at a higher elevation so it's summit is higher than Denali.

We pulled off onto a side road named, "Mountain View Rd", hoping that we would wake up to sunny views of Denali. No dice. Rainy and foggy when we woke up and no Denali in sight.

Clouds were too low so no sign of Denali. Still, the scenery was spectacular.

We pulled over to stop for the night. In Alaska, you can pull over and park overnight anywhere, unless there's a sign saying you cannot. You see RV's pulled over into pull-offs for the night all the time. This is our spot, it's sort of high on the side of a mountain. We believe Denali was in front of us behind the clouds.