Fairbanks to Healy (Denali)

Saturday 7th June
We made sure we got to breakfast early today as there are six people staying in the main part of the house where our apartment is.  John makes us yet another delicious omlette for breakfast and we chat to Claus again, he is leaving today.

On the way out of Fairbanks we drop into the Farmers' Market to check out how it goes in Alaska.  It seems it's the same to world over a few farmers, a few food stalls and a lot of 'stuff' stalls.  I did pick up a really cute scarf, rayon in one peice, hand painted with a felt cuff with a caribou horn button.  It's purple and called berries sooo you know I had to have it.

It's a perfect day for a ride and we call into a small town called Nenana for our morning tea.  We share a huge peice of blueberry pie, ala mode of course.  Nenana has something called the Nenana Ice Classic every year.  The tickets cost $2.50 each and the whole idea ia betting on the day, hour, minute the ice breaks in the river.  Last year there was over $300,000 prize money split between 25 winning tickets. So of course I had to have a go or four!! this is a picture of me posting my winning ticket.

When we were leaving the cafe we met up with a Queensland couple and got talking, gave them some tips on stuff to see in Fairbanks. 

On the next leg of the trip we ran into massive roadworks, they went for miles!!!!!!!! and it was all gravel.  Boy were we glad when we finally got through them all.


We arrived at the RV Park and Motel where we are staying and checked in.  Once we settled all our stuff into the room we rode down to Denali to check on our bus tickets for tomorrow and to ride in to Savage River (12 miles which is as far as you can drive into the park).  This sign is on our hotel door how cute is it?

We saw a moose in the park but it was a fair way away.  There wasn't much wildlife up to the 12 mile mark.  So we visited the visitors centre which was really cool because the other day I saw some animal dung near our room and wondered what did it well it was a moose!! so we learnt a little bit more about the wildlife.
We pick up a pizza and some beer on the way back to the hotel.  The pizza is pretty awful they should have used about half the cheese but the beer is lovely a nice Alaskan Amber mmmm.