make A move: Road Trip Adventure: Day 14, Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Locations Hit:
Fairbanks, Alaska
Denali National Park, Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska

When we woke up Chris was already in the midst of preparing a breakfast of eggs, Dall sheep sausage, and toast with homemade blueberry jam. He had excitedly offered to take us on a boat ride so we loaded up the boat and headed out. We dropped the boat into the Chena River and road for about 45 minutes, stopped on a gravel bar and hiked around for a while before riding back. We saw a bunch of beaver swimming around and some traditional replica riverboats. When we got back from the boat ride Chris whipped us up some homemade beef stew and halibut cheeks, a super tender piece of the halibut that resembles lobster in both taste and texture. All in all I got to taste three new types of meets while staying with Chris and all were superb. As always we were on a time schedule though and had to move on to our next destination.

Denali National Park has always been somewhat of a dream for me to visit. All in all, the park is larger than the state of Massachusetts and home to Mt. McKinley, the highest summit in North America, making it one of the world’s seven summits. For those readers that have read or seen Into the Wild, this is also the park where Chris McCandles spent the final months of his life in the abandoned school bus. We had wanted to spend more time camping but were short on time and had to settle for a day of hiking. We climbed Mt. Healy which is about a 3,500 feet in elevation and offered a gorgeous view of the park and Alaskan mountains. After returning fromd the hike we pushed forward for our last 4 hours of the scheduled road trip to Anchorage. We arrived around 1:30A.M.

Chris, Dan, and Lisl on the gravel bar during the boat ride in Fairbanks.