Denali State Park to Fairbanks

After a brisk morning hike and Oatmeal we broke camp and headed to Denali State Park. About 8 miles out of Talkeetna there was a birch syrup processing plant and store so we had to stop. They produce 90% of all Birch syrup in the world. A nice young lady gave us a tour of the place and offered some samples. She was from Vermont and grew up making maple syrup.

It takes 110 gallons of Birch sap to make one gallon of Birch syrup where Maple syrup only needs 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of Maple syrup. Being weak minded individuals, we walked out with 2 varieties of Birch syrup, Birch carmels and a jar of Birch mustard.

A rare view of Mt. McKinley (center) through the clouds

Sunday we set up camp at Denali State Park, not to be confused with Denali National Park which is the park most tourists rave about. We're the odd couple in that we're not going to stop in Denali National park. The big draw is you pay to sit on a bus with 70 other people to drive along windy dirt roads while the bus driver points out wildlife on the bare treeless mountain terrain which we don't want to do. And you will see grizzly bears, goats, and a bunch of other critters. The national park is beautiful in many respecs. 

Denali State Park on the other hand is heavily wooded. We're on a beautiful lake and we rented a canoe in hopes of seeing a Moose in the water. It started out perfect …. the water was completely still and the reflections from the mountains made it like a postcard. After we got to the other end of the lake however things changed quickly. A front started blowing in and wouldn't you know it … the wind was right in our face so now we had to work at our paddling. But that was a good thing as we could use the exercise.

The calm before the storm

After over 8000 miles Denali SP seemed like the perfect place to use our bikes for the first time. When I removed the bikes from the rack, it was obvious we're going to need new bikes. They were a mess. I'm not going to even get into all the busted parts. Let's just say they may get a welding torch taken to them to transform into some kind of New Age art form when we get home.

We're now in Fairbanks which is our northern most destination. We stopped at a few Fairbanks museums and even went to a hokey tourist show which was amusing. A couple more Alaskan destinations and then we'll be slowly tracking for home. The return trip will be via the scenic Cassiar Highway south. It looks like we'll probably be home a bit earlier than our initial plans.