Riding the Wendy Bus

This blog is mainly about Happenings. It is about roads taken, serendipity, coincidence, and astonishment. At least one of these things occurs on a daily basis for us and on some days, they all do.

We have logged in another wonderful week. Leaving the Kanai we got to Anchorage in time to share Pizza Night with Carol. I love her so much that I endured another night at the Golden Nugget RV Park. I hope she appreciates my sacrifice. Monday we drove up to Eagle River and parked our TT at Lulie and Bud’s place. It is True Alaska! Lulie and I were canoeing buddies in Tallahassee over 30 years ago. We had a lot of catching up to do. Had a good hike with Lulie and three of her eight dogs. This was our first exposure to the true nature of Alaskan mosquitos; big, slow, plentiful, and relentless.

On Tuesday we wandered up toward Talkeetna, a wonderful village located at the junction with the Talkeetna, Susitna, and Chulita Rivers. It also has an active train depot and is the jumping-off point for climbing expeditions to Mt McKinley/Denali. With the holiday weekend coming up it was a “happening place”.

Wednesday we drove on up the Parks Highway to Denali. No camping spaces in the Park of course, so we settled on Denali Rainbow Village RV Park. Mere words cannot explain to the uninitiated how awful an Alaskan commercial RV park can be. Our expectations are very low but this place sank below them. The one positive note was their excellent dog-walker who gave Percy four walks and put out her supper when we were away for $20.

This brings us up to the Wendy Bus and serendipity, coincidence, and astonishment. Denali NP has only one road that leads 95 miles into the interior. Vehicle access is limited to the first 15 miles, as is the pavement. The Park provides a variety of shuttle busses but have only two choices for going the entire route to Kantishna. One is the Kantishna Experience ($162 per seat), an upgraded school bus with shocks and springs that provides a park service naturalist and a box lunch. The other is a green school bus with a driver ($50 per seat)

 Considering our old bones we felt that 190 miles and 12 hours on a school bus might be a bit much so we decided to spring for the expensive ride. Holy Serendipity! They were sold out. It was the Green Bus or nothing. Drivers of the Green busses are just hired to drive the bus. They don’t have to say a word all day, but we got Wendy Hester. No PhD naturalist could have been better. She has been driving a bus in the Park for over 20 years and nothing slips by her. (She has also been driving a public school bus in Anchorage for 20 years and has eyes in the back of her head). We saw all the requisite animals and we saw The Mountain, over and over again. It was an amazing and astonishing day. We are so lucky to have spent it on the Wendy Bus.

When we left the Rainbow RV Park we were so starved for space that we towed over the Denali Highway (nothing to do with the Park), to Paxson on the Richardson Highway. It is 135 miles, 105 of which is unpaved. It is a beautiful road and worth every bump. Last night we dry-camped at a BLM parking area beside Tangle Lake. There was a snow bank right outside our window.

At Delta Junction we turned east on the ALCAN and returned to Tok. Turning east for the first time in over two months and completing the circle back to Tok makes me feel that we are “going out” as the Alaskans say. We have a lot of happenings ahead of us however, and tomorrow we are off to Chicken.