Friday July 21

Day 21 July 21

It rained all night in Denali, but let up in time for Peach and I to take a nice three mile walk in the woods along and across three rushing rivers. Didn't see the mountain. In fact, Mount Denali (McKinley) is dozens of miles away from the public areas of Denali National Park, and when it's not obscured by clouds, it's blocked by other peaks in front of it that are much closer. Your best bet to see the mountain is to head 30 to 100 miles south and see it from a roadside pullout. That's what we planned to do on our way south to Anchorage. Fifteen minutes into our drive, we remembered that we forgot to take our picture at the Denali Park sign. We had done this in 2001 when we brought our kids here. Peach and I stood in front of the sign and the kids sat on top, with the mountains in the background. We brought the picture with and planned to re-enact it. So we turned around and went back the fifteen miles. Our plan was to  borrow a couple of kids who we hoped might be with a family taking their picture there. If I can swap out Peach for Jessie at the brewery, and Peach can swap out me for Brent at the tire shop, it stands to reason we can swap Tony and Natalie for two random kids at the Denali Park sign! When we got there, we ran into two problems. First of all, there were no kids. Secondly, the sign had changed since 2001. It was more natural, and much bigger. It would've been pretty tough getting some kids we didn't know to climb all the way up there, and the size of the sign blocked the view of the mountains. So we had a childless guy take a picture of just Peach and I, and headed back again toward Anchorage. 

The new and original pictures at sign

Our hike at Denali

Along the way, our travelers Bible, The Milepost, told us of three prime spots to view the mountain. We stopped at all three of them. It was partly cloudy over most of the sky and completely cloudy where the mountain supposedly was. At each place, there were other travelers sucked in by the same myth that we were, thinking there was really a huge mountain there, thinking the clouds were clearing, and thinking we were catching glimpses of the white glacial slopes among the white  clouds. It never happened. 

We finally made it to Anchorage after our foolishness and spent a very nice night at the home of Scott and Raynae (Harding) Hipsak and their son, Carter. We met them at a wedding in Arizona two years ago (more about that in a minute.) Scott and Raynae  are both vibrant people with strong personalities, and we thoroughly enjoyed our conversations. We also enjoyed the meal and fine scotch Scott served, and sleeping in a bed other than our camper's, for the first time in three weeks. 

The four of us at Raynae and Scott's.

The wedding I mentioned is the reason we are making this trip to Alaska and the reason the blog URL is ATMAlaska. The wedding was between our nephew, Brad, and a lovely girl from Kenai; Katy Harding (Raynae's cousin.) It was in Scottsdale and was spectacular. Peach and I and family spent several days there and met many fine people. We call Katy, "Moose Hunter" because the first thing the family knew about her was that she hunts moose. Turns out she also hunts grizzly bear and caribou and is an avid fisherman and outdoors person. She also happens to have played on the University of Wisconsin women's hockey team when they won two national championships! Brad hit a home run with this one! Actually, so did Katy, Brad's no slouch either. We met Katy's outstanding parents at the wedding: Evan and Kathy. Evan  is a competitive, driven, fun loving guy who likes to do things full bore. We hit it off immediately. We went golfing twice, and he likes to bet on just about everything. Longest drive, closest to the pin, longest putt, best shirt, whatever. Anything's in play at $5 a hole. I lost lots of $5 bills. During the wedding reception, when it came time for Evan to give the "father of the bride toast," he starts talking about me. He said "I like Brad's Uncle Dick, whenever I need five dollars, I just play another golf hole with him. He's my ATM!" 

Brad and Katy, their baby daughter Sloane, and Brad’s parents; my brother Bill and wife, Laurie, will all be at Evan and Kathy's home in Kenai this week. Evan told Bill to invite us up. When I heard that, Peach and I quickly decided, what the heck, so here we are. We’re staying with the gang at the beautiful “Harding’s Kenai River Lodge. The first thing I did in planning the trip was go to the bank and get a stack of five dollar bills.