About 125 miles (200 km) south of Fairbanks is Denali National Park, in size one of the largest national parks in the US and the most visited in Alaska. Everybody who visits Alaska, visits Denali (too) and it’s always very busy because it’s a short season; from mid-May till mid-September.

Denali

Fortunately you don’t really see all those people because you’re not allowed to drive through the park in your own vehicle. The first 15 mile (25 km) of the road are paved and accessible with private vehicles. After that, the road is unpaved and no private vehicles are allowed. Only busses, unless you hike or bike in. Cycling in the park is allowed.

The attractions of the park are the wildlife and the highest mountain of North America; Mt. McKinley, or Denali. The wildlife is always there and usually you’ll see some, but the mountain is not always visible. They say that only about 30% of the tourist that come to the park get to see the mountain. The rest of the time it’s behind the (dark) clouds.

When we were in Fairbanks, we checked the weather forecast regularly. You don’t want to be in the park when the weather is not good; you can’t see anything and that’s just a shame. So we stayed in Fairbanks for an extra day and left in the pouring rain. It didn’t stop raining all day. But it was for a good cause, the next day it was dry again and the weather got better and better.

After 1,5 days on a nice campground in the entrance area of the park, we loaded our bikes and stuff for 1 night on a bus and we went into the park on that bus. We saw a few bears, one of which was right in the middle of the road, Dall sheep and caribou. And then we saw the mountain; a beautiful, white and high peak. The sky was bright blue so the mountain was as visible as it will ever get. That hardly ever happenes, usually there’s at least one little cloud around it.

We got off the bus and cycled back. It was beautiful and the only other traffic was the busses, but sometimes there was a lot of time in between busses so it was nice and quiet. Unfortunately we didn’t see any more wildlife up close. That night we camped on a small campground in the park and the next day we cycled the last miles back to the entrance area and to the campground we were the first nights. The weather was still great, but clouds came rolling in in the afternoon and it started raining in the evening.

The next day it was cloudy again, like usual and we left the park. It took 4 days to get to Anchorage. We stopped in the little, touristy town of Talkeetna and when we cycled out of town, further towards Anchorage that day, the Dutch soccer team lost to Argentina…

We arrived in Anchorage on a cold and rainy day. Fortunately we had a warm and dry place to stay over there; Tom and Susie had offered us to come stay with them when and if we were in town. We have our own place in the basement, with a bedroom, bathroom and living space with tv if we’d want to use it.

The plan was to take the ferry from Whittier (close to Anchorage) to Prince Rupert a few days later and then cycle again from there on. That’s still the plan, but it got delayed by 2 weeks.

Tom and Susie have a VW campervan which is at the house of friends, somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula right now. They would like to have it back home, but haven’t had the time/energy to go get it yet. We would like to see the Kenai Peninsula, because it’s supposed to be beautiful over there. But there’s only 1 road, so that means we would have to cycle it twice and we don’t really feel like doing that. The sollution wasn’t hard to find; we ride our bikes to where the campervan is parked, explore the peninsula in a warm and dry van and then drive it back to Anchorage. Later, we got offered a ride to the campervan so we don’t even have to cycle anymore! Everybody happy… The next ferry from Whittier leaves in 2 weeks, so we have to be back by then.