We headed out on our adventure yesterday after church. It rained the whole way to Denali National Park. 5 hours and 300 miles of rain did not give us a lot of hope. (The road permit is only good if the road is actually open...) But we had a great time hanging out together, and seeing the fall colors in the rain. Or what was left of them at least.
We stayed at the McKinley Chalet Resort. And hearing the wind howl all night made us extra glad we decided not to camp in the park.
We woke up early so we could get a good head start getting our road permit. Just as we pulled onto the Wilderness Access Road, we realized the road wasn't bad. The bumpiness we were experiencing was from a
flat shredded tire.
Great.
We were in my dad's Mazda MPV. We knew it had a spare. But we had no idea where the jack was. I called my dad. He didn't know either. I called roadside assistance. They didn't even know how to spell Denali. Luke used to power of google to find that the jack and tire iron were actually hidden alongside the passenger seat. We held our breath and hoped and prayed the spare tire had air in it.
Phew. It did.
Luke did all the hard work. I asked if I could help, and he said I could help by documenting. So I did!
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| Lowering the spare. |
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| Removing the carnage |
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| Carnage up close |
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| Wilderness Access Center in the background...so close yet so far away |
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| Putting the shredded tire away |
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| The spare |
After that we were worried something would happen if we ended up going into the park. And we were all out of extra tires. We went in the Access Center to see what kind of services the Park Rangers could give us-if needed-in the park. It turned out that the Park Road was mostly closed. You could only go to Teklanika. So then we had to decide if it was worth paying $45 to go 10 miles into the park on a blustery day such as this. We decided that we wouldn't buy our permit and we would only drive to Savage River (where anyone can go...no permit needed).
We saw some beautiful scenery.
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| Our cracked front view |
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| The sun even came out for awhile! |
Oh and we did get to see some wildlife...
On the way home I slept...and sneaky Luke took some pics...
The colors don't look as bright in the pictures as they did in real life!
And this is the sneakiest picture of all...
We stopped in Talkeetna to eat at the Roadhouse on the way home. It was delicious! And after that, I stayed awake. :)
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