Wednesday July 14th, Clearwater Creek, Denali Hwy, AK

105 Miles

We are not the best planners when we travel, we have a vague idea of the direction we are heading and places we want to see, but really make no definite plans until we get into the area. This morning we sat down with the maps to work out the next stage of our trip after completing Denali Park. There are so many places that we want to see around this area of Alaska and there appears to be no way of doing a loop through them, somewhere we need to go back over roads.

We had heard that the Denali Highway is well worth traveling over. It is 160 miles of unsealed road that travels from west to east from Cantwell to Paxon on the Richardson Highway. It seemed a good route to Anchorage.

This morning it was raining, and before leaving the park we called into the Mercantile to get wifi and were so surprised as we parked next to Dave and Wanda who we had spent some time with in Fairbanks, they had  just arrived in the park. They had done part of the Dalton and also some side trips, it was great to swap notes. We got a good coffee from the Mercantile and hit the road.

It was about a 20 mile trip south to Cantwell, then onto the Denali Highway. 

We have traveled almost half of it today, a slow trip as the road surface if pretty rough in places and we were down to 20 mph much of the way, but the most fabulous scenery, with views up into the mountains, and very little traffic. The rain cleared and the cloud slowly lifted. We looked north to the Alaska Range and saw several huge glaciers in the distance. Lots of very small lakes everywhere called kettle lakes, these are the remnants of the glaciers that used to flow through this area.

Tonight we are camped beside a beautiful small river, although it is called a creek! It is very clear and flowing swiftly over stones. Ian went off for a fish and got 2 very small grayling, definitely not keepers but a lot of fun.