Monday, May 29, 2006
Day One: Chilling in the Tangle Lakes
Well, we headed down Friday in the afternoon. My secret camp site on the Tangle lakes side was inaccessible due to still melting snow drifts so we continued on until finding a camp around some trail, Landmark Gap trail I think. Camp looked decent, so, I got ready to clear a spot for my tent. Lots of TP laying around... should have been a clue. So, there's this pile of rocks right where I wanted to drop my tent. Turns out somebody... earlier in the day I'm pretty sure... had dropped a couple of brown trout and covered them with rocks. What a way to start the trip.
On the off off chance this person is reading, perhaps it would be in your interest to be a little more liberal with the TP next time, for the sake of your friends if not yourself (not much TP under the rock). So, time to head down the ATV trail for some mountain biking before the road crawl across the Denali Highway. There was a truck on the trails already. He said it was mucky. No joke! I kept sinking in over my wheels (like 3 - 4 inches):
How cool is that. It got pretty bad. I only made it 1 mile down the trail before giving up, I was doing more pushing than riding. Here's my tire. This wasn't the worst of it. Looks like I should be making a bike commercial:
So, on the return tried to pick a new path. Apparently I wasn't going fast enough to ride through this snow drift. That cracked me up:
The icing on the cake was the rednecks who showed up around 10:30 and camped pretty much in our camping spot. But, before hitting the hay they headed out on a four-wheeler to the lake (we told them it was probably still frozen but of course they had to see for themselves). They'd been here last year of course and it was fine then. So, the wife / girlfriend of one of these dudes kept pacing until sometime after midnight when they finally returned hopefully so covered in mud that their night was miserable but who knows.
On the off off chance this person is reading, perhaps it would be in your interest to be a little more liberal with the TP next time, for the sake of your friends if not yourself (not much TP under the rock). So, time to head down the ATV trail for some mountain biking before the road crawl across the Denali Highway. There was a truck on the trails already. He said it was mucky. No joke! I kept sinking in over my wheels (like 3 - 4 inches):
How cool is that. It got pretty bad. I only made it 1 mile down the trail before giving up, I was doing more pushing than riding. Here's my tire. This wasn't the worst of it. Looks like I should be making a bike commercial:
So, on the return tried to pick a new path. Apparently I wasn't going fast enough to ride through this snow drift. That cracked me up:
The icing on the cake was the rednecks who showed up around 10:30 and camped pretty much in our camping spot. But, before hitting the hay they headed out on a four-wheeler to the lake (we told them it was probably still frozen but of course they had to see for themselves). They'd been here last year of course and it was fine then. So, the wife / girlfriend of one of these dudes kept pacing until sometime after midnight when they finally returned hopefully so covered in mud that their night was miserable but who knows.
