I dressed warmly this morning in silk underwear, turtleneck and vest and then noticed that the lodge housekeeper was running around in a tank top and shorts!! So Cal people are so soft! We got breakfast across the street at the Creekside Café: huge nutty blueberry pancakes for me and eggs, bacon, & potatoes for Bob. Then we drove back to the Park, past the Visitors’ Center, and continued on 14 miles to the end of the road for private cars. On the way, we came upon a Moose Jam, and saw a large female moose amble across the road pretty oblivious to the cars full of gawking people!
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| Moose Jam! |
It was drizzling and in the low 50s when we stopped at the Savage River but we bundled up and walked along the trail. There was a sign warning about Grizzlies so I attached my bear bell on my jacket and we jingled along but we saw no mammals or birds. It’s very quiet everywhere in the park for some reason. We walked a mile, crossed a small bridge, and returned on the other side. The rain stopped and the clouds raised a bit so we got some good view of the lower mountains. August is the rainiest month here, so our chance of seeing Denali is small. As we were at 2-3000’ and the mountain is more than 20,000’ high, the view of it must be incredible when it‘s clear!
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| Savage River |
We started back and came upon another small traffic jam; this time for a pair of Caribou feeding in the low shrubs! They were carrying enormous racks of antlers!
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| Grazing Caribou |
We stopped at the kennels to see the huskies that are used to transport all sorts of supplies in the winter throughout the park. The rangers are obviously very fond of their dogs and showed us around, letting us pat the friendlier ones. The dogs really love cold weather and just lounge around in the “heat”, sitting on their individual flat-roofed log-cabin houses and hoping for someone to walk them. They are so well trained that there was no barking or squabbling. At 2PM the rangers put on a show, telling about the dogs, how the dogs are selected and how they handle the cold and perform their duties. The rangers then walked over to the kennels to select some huskies to demonstrate their skills to us and the dogs really began howling! They were all so eager to be selected to pull a sled! The rangers harnessed five of them and they took off, pulling the sled around a dirt track with amazing speed! It was a really impressive demonstration.
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| Huskies lounging on their houses |
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| Happy dogs! |
We were feeling peckish by then and went to the grill at the Visitors’ Center and split a basket of chicken tenders and fries. To work that off, we took a hike up and over a hill to Horseshoe Lake (a former oxbow of the Nenana River) and found a well-constructed beaver dam.
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| Beaver dam |
Back to Carlo Creek Lodge for a brief rest and over to Panorama Pizzeria Pub across the street for some beer and a veggie pizza.
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