Adventures

Day 18 - Denali National Park and the green shuttle bus

The second day of our road trip began early for us, as we had to make our way to Denali National Park until 11.30 at the latest to be on time to board our shuttle bus. Since we hadn’t seen any animals on the previous day and were almost through the scenic parts of the road, we didn’t expect too much of the last bit of road left on the Denali Highway. But just about five minutes after we had started driving again two caribou stood right in the middle of the road. We stopped. They looked at us and then started to walk towards us. They stayed in sight for quite some time, looking at us just as curious as we looked at them. Then another car drove by and they went off into the bushes.

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Day 17 - The scenic Denali Highway

The beginning of our trip to the Denali Highway led us up the Glenn Highway, a route we had taken before, up to Glennallen. From there we followed the Richardson Highway to Paxson where we finally took a turn onto the Denali Highway. Just getting there had already swallowed up 6 hours in the car, and we were determined to drive at least half of the Denali Highway that day.

The craziest thing though was actually the process of gassing up. We knew we’d have to gas up again before we went onto the Denali Highway, but didn’t want to gas up as early as Glenallen. We had a map that showed a gas station in Paxson but I really didn’t want to take the risk of taking the very last possible gas station. Turned out it was a good decision, because Paxson ended up being something like a ghost town. The lodge advertised in our brochure was abandoned and the gas station was nowhere to be found...

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Day 8 - The Kenai Peninsula

The start of our second week in Alaska also marked the beginning of our second road trip. This time we're not going up into interior Alaska, but rather down south to visit the Kenai Peninsula. With a pop-up trailer attached to the huge car we started our way south via the seward highway along Turnagain Arm. During the five hour drive we passed through Copper Landing, Sterling, Soldotna and Anchor Point to finally make it to our destination: Homer. The scenic drive led us along the sea, through the Chugach Mountains, over several rivers and swamp areas.

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Day 6 - Trip back to Eagle River

Our day #6 in Alaska started really early as we wanted to go pick blueberries again before we had to leave Tok. We got up at 5 o'clock to do so, and after about one and a half hours of picking we ended up having a whole bucket of blueberries that we got to take back to Eagle River so we could have some blueberry pancakes in the future.

After that we started our long drive back "home". Even though we really looked hard we didn't see many wild animals, besides a young fox and some swans. The road led us back the same way that we had come, following Tok Cutoff and the Glen Highway, but we did stop at a few different picture locations and took more photos...

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Day 3 - Trip to Tok

On our third day, we did our first "road trip", which lead us to the famous city Tok. Since the roads in Alaska aren’t as crowded as the german ones we’re used to, we had to prepare for every circumstance which could occur. So we packed all our stuff, loaded the Excursion and got on Glenn Highway. We were heading into the direction of the next big city of Alaska, Fairbanks. Driving through Alaska is pretty scenic. The road led us through a variety of countrysides and we could experience the diversity of what Alaska can provide. The landscape is so beautiful and we had some really amazing views...

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