Sunday, August 13, 2006
Turn back the clock: Denali
Yeah, seems like forever ago now Jessie, her mom, and I went to Denali. It was pretty fun having her in town, all kinds of things to see like this thorough tape job done out at Chena Hot springs:
The guy was working on the bathroom all through dinner. Pretty noisy since he was cutting stuff with a circular saw and stuff. Once he was done he taped it up so nobody could even think about using the unfinished bathroom. The attention to detail on the tape job was what really caught my eye though.
Anyway, the night before was pretty and so we had high hopes for nice weather down at the park. It was overcast but still managed to be pretty neat. Here's the sunset the night before:
What trip wouldn't be complete without the odd picture or two? Check out this sign from the park entrance... There's not much to it but a quality misspelling not caught by the spell checker. If not for the cabin life I'm not sure that I would properly value water and flushing myself.
One of the trip highlights was a bus ride through Denali. It was my first trip on a bus but that was cool since we were all going together. Got off to a funny start. This guy totally caught our eye. First off he polished his and several other windows (camera phone strikes again):
Then, just when the bus was leaving asked to run in to the bathroom one more time and did the duck-the-head-down move to run faster than normal in to the bathroom. Quite the funny guy and were fortunate enough to meet up with him again later. Here he is taking self-portraits up at Polychrome. Cracked us up!
Jessie and I got off the bus at Polychrome to wander around rather than take the bus trip the few more miles to Toklat. Ended up being super cool. Even though it was overcast the weather was nice and there were all kinds of cool things to see like the mountains of course:
But then there was also cool stuff like the ever cute ground squirrel (no matter what Emily says):
... and this family of bears, a momma and 3 cubs (you can't see them all but they're in center of the picture).
They were pretty funny. We were out hiking a bit and heard people talking and pointing in our direction. Couldn't figure out what made us so special. Turns out the bear famiy was just coming over the hill in our direction. The other bus people form our group totally missed out. As did most folks because everybody else got back on the bus. We hung out and watched the bears come down towards us, walk across the road and then meander all the way down to the valley floor. Pretty cool and we totally got our moneys worth.
The tourists that followed were funny, too. The busses got nutty of course:
But the tourists then tracked the bears across the valley floor from the bathroom stop where from our vantage point they were teeny little specks, even with binoculars.
The guy was working on the bathroom all through dinner. Pretty noisy since he was cutting stuff with a circular saw and stuff. Once he was done he taped it up so nobody could even think about using the unfinished bathroom. The attention to detail on the tape job was what really caught my eye though.
Anyway, the night before was pretty and so we had high hopes for nice weather down at the park. It was overcast but still managed to be pretty neat. Here's the sunset the night before:
What trip wouldn't be complete without the odd picture or two? Check out this sign from the park entrance... There's not much to it but a quality misspelling not caught by the spell checker. If not for the cabin life I'm not sure that I would properly value water and flushing myself.
One of the trip highlights was a bus ride through Denali. It was my first trip on a bus but that was cool since we were all going together. Got off to a funny start. This guy totally caught our eye. First off he polished his and several other windows (camera phone strikes again):
Then, just when the bus was leaving asked to run in to the bathroom one more time and did the duck-the-head-down move to run faster than normal in to the bathroom. Quite the funny guy and were fortunate enough to meet up with him again later. Here he is taking self-portraits up at Polychrome. Cracked us up!
Jessie and I got off the bus at Polychrome to wander around rather than take the bus trip the few more miles to Toklat. Ended up being super cool. Even though it was overcast the weather was nice and there were all kinds of cool things to see like the mountains of course:
But then there was also cool stuff like the ever cute ground squirrel (no matter what Emily says):
... and this family of bears, a momma and 3 cubs (you can't see them all but they're in center of the picture).
They were pretty funny. We were out hiking a bit and heard people talking and pointing in our direction. Couldn't figure out what made us so special. Turns out the bear famiy was just coming over the hill in our direction. The other bus people form our group totally missed out. As did most folks because everybody else got back on the bus. We hung out and watched the bears come down towards us, walk across the road and then meander all the way down to the valley floor. Pretty cool and we totally got our moneys worth.
The tourists that followed were funny, too. The busses got nutty of course:
But the tourists then tracked the bears across the valley floor from the bathroom stop where from our vantage point they were teeny little specks, even with binoculars.
