The other Denali park: Denali State Park

Did you know there are two parks right next to each other bearing the name of Denali? The one everyone thinks about is Denali National Park and Preserve. The other which is on the opposite side of the Alaskan Range, is the Denali State Park. The state park may get overlooked by many who visit Alaska, but it had a ton to offer and was one of the most enjoyable parts of our trip. We spent several very pleasant days here, while we waited for our reserved time in the national park. I have to say that the State Park is a must do as well. We very much enjoyed our time here and it was the only place that we actually saw Denali’s peaks.

We had originally planned to drive across the state via the Denali Highway to get to the National Park. The Denali highway is over 120 miles of mostly gravel road and the guide books and online had various descriptions of the quality of the road. We were concerned about taking our two large rigs down it with no experience with it, so we made the decision to backtrack to Wasilla and then go up the Parks Highway. We stayed in the Big Bear RV Park in Wasilla for a few days to do laundry, get groceries, work and go to church. This was a good RV Park for us, centrally located for those activities and with a laundry room on site it was very convenient.

The air was super smoky from a fire that was raging along the Parks Highway–our chosen route to Denali National Park. The road had been closed intermittently and the fire was said to be on both sides of the road with zero visibility. Over 80 structures had been lost in this fire, so it was a big one. Traffic was being taken through by pilot car one direction at a time and travel was not advised. Delays were said to be very long as you waited for a safe time to go through. So, dilemma. Do we head out and drive around the other way all the way to Fairbanks–backtracking and a really long drive? Or, backtrack and take the Denali Highway and follow our original plan–unsure of driving conditions, slow and a lot of miles? Or, do we wait it out an extra day in Wasilla and hope the firefighters get control of the blaze–shortest most direct route, but could be closed or very time consuming? We chose the latter which ended up being a blessing to us in so many ways.

Just a side note for those of you thinking of doing this same trip, there is a great website for getting up-to-date information about road conditions. It is http://511.alaska.govand if you are on a mobile device you have to type in an “m.” in front of it or it doesn’t work, so http://m.511.alaska.gov . This is a super helpful site. Since we were traveling in Alaska during one of their worst summers for wildfires, I also became familiar with another helpful site. For current fires go to https://akfireinfo.com/ and http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html . Local news websites were also helpful.

After an extra day in Wasilla, we got ready to head out for another adventure not knowing what we would find at the fire site along the Parks Highway. As we were unhooking from our hook-ups, a small issue arise. Mike mistakenly twisted the female end of the fresh water connector off with the hose, rather than just removing the hose. The issue is that the valve that stops the fresh water had to have that female end to properly close. So anytime you turned on the water pump it would squirt water out of that fresh water connector. So, this was a trip stopper and we had to fix it. The issue is it required a 1/2″ hex to tighten the female end back on to the fresh water intake and of course, we didn’t have one. Luckily we were in a heavily populated area, so our options for purchasing what we needed were plentiful–or so we thought.

While Mike filled up with propane and finished getting us ready to leave, Dad and I went to Lowe’s to get the 1/2″ hex we needed–they didn’t have one. So we went to Napa Auto Parts–they didn’t have one. So we went to CarQuest–they didn’t have one. That’s three stores that did not have the tool we needed. Well, I was really starting to get a bit nervous that we would have to go all the way back to Anchorage or order it online and wait for it to arrive. This was Wednesday, August 21st and we were supposed to be at Denali on Sunday for our reservations. So, I offered a little pray to please help us find one. And another tender mercy came our way when at our next stop at O’Riley’s we found a 1/2″ hex socket as part of a hex socket set. So, two reminders again. 1) God is good to us and answers our prayers and, 2) don’t fret and worry so much–just persevere to solve your problem (there was really nothing to worry about because we would have been fine even if we had to backtrack to Anchorage). It is funny how I don’t always remember the things I have “learned” over and over again when I am in the moment. I have to keep getting reminded. We got the valve fixed and headed out. Just think if we had chosen a different route and had this issue.

Near Willow, Alaska, we came to the stop to await our turn to go through. We had just missed the last group going. As we were waiting, a couple of semi trucks came down the road from the fire. It turns out they were the caterers for the HotShots. I hadn’t ever considered all the support teams that have to support the firefighters and the mammoth effort it takes to help them fight the fire.

We ended up only waiting for about 30 minutes. We really lucked out–another tender mercy. Others we talked to later had waited over 1 1/2 hours. The worst I heard was someone had waited 6 hours, only to be told they were not getting through at all that day. Safety first! I really appreciate all the amazing firefighters from all over the country who have been in Alaska this summer working to keep us all safe. (Note: as I am writing this article almost three weeks later, this fire is still raging. Please pray for the families who have lost their homes and the fire fighters who are putting their lives on the line in Alaska this summer and elsewhere.)

We arrived at the Denali State Park mid-afternoon. Originally, I had wanted to stay at the Byers Lake Campground because it is so highly rated on all the camping apps and sites. But the state park’s website said that it was closed for the year for dead tree clearance. (This proved not to be the case—websites don’t always get updated with the latest info.) We decided instead to stay at the newest campground in Denali State Park—K’esugi Ken Campground (2017). This is a great campground and we were pretty much completely alone the third week in August. This campground does not appear in many of the printed camping guides because it is so new. I found it in Campendium where it had the highest ratings of all the campgrounds, including Byer’s lake. I can see why. It is a fantastic campground. It has plenty of sites for big and small rigs and tents. It has a great trail system with easy, short hikes and longer, more difficult ones.

When we arrived, we just needed to do some walking having just driven for a while. We chose the Moose Flats hike at only about .5 miles and connects with the Hoodoos trail. We walked both of these trails. There was a viewpoint of the valley and mountain ranges which we assumed was to see Denali when it is visible, but it was not visible. Denali is only seen by about 30% of those who visit the national park. It is so tall that it creates its own weather system and is often shrouded in clouds. The view was beautiful but smoky due to the fire we had just come through and others in the area.

That evening, there was a Ranger Program we decided to attend. We were the only ones who attended. Ranger Chelsea was so much fun. She is actually assigned to Denali National Park, but they loan out their rangers to the state park. She is from a tiny town in Michigan and is a seasonal ranger. We had a delightful time with her. Her program was titled Parks in Primetime. It was all about the use of national and state parks in movies and television. It was a fun trivia game to guess the movie and then the park used in the movie. We actually did a fantastic job. There were only two of the TV programs we didn’t know and we guessed all but one of the parks involved. I was rather impressed with our knowledge of the parks.

Ranger Chelsea’s goal with her program was to help people recognize that these movies would not be what they were without the park as the setting for them. Think of the Ewoks in Star Wars not being in the lush forests of the Redwood National Park. Although many Americans never visit any of the National Parks, we are familiar with them because they are in the movies and television we watch. These places if not protected will disappear and we can not get them back. If you have not visited a National Park recently or ever, please consider it for your next trip. I have visited many of them and they are amazing places and each have their own unique characteristics. On this trip I have added several others to my list of visited parks. I hope to one day visit them all. I hope you will take just a little bit of inspiration from my blog and choose to visit these amazing places. (Note: Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of Ranger Chelsea. I am very sad about that, because she figures into our story two more times when we visited the National Park.)

We still wanted to experience the Denali Highway, so we decided to take Beauty (our Jeep) and drive the 120ish miles of the Denali Highway. This is part of Alaska that remains as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. It is the great, vast wilderness and it was beautiful although our views were a bit obscured by clouds and haze from the fires. It was a beautiful drive particularly because the tundra had its fall colors out. The pictures do not do it justice at all. The road was actually in very good condition so we could have totally driven the road with Beast. When we come again, we may choose to do that depending on the weather. But I am glad we didn’t because we would have missed the Denali State Park and Ranger Chelsea and maybe had trouble finding the hex we needed.

On the Denali Highway we saw our first Caribou of the trip. The first Caribou we saw was actually very close right on the road in front of us, but we were not quick enough with the camera to capture it. That was the closest Caribou we saw the whole trip. They are beautiful animals and the males and females have antlers so it is hard to tell them apart.

We also saw some beautiful swans. A swan family and an adult swan that appeared to be standing guard over another adult swan hidden in the grass. Maybe that swan was injured or had young hidden too. The young were fairly large by that time of year with the flight south coming very soon. I knew that swans normally mate for life, but I also learned that the male and female raise the cygnets (baby swans) together for one year before they either leave on their own or are chased away.

After a really long drive that day, when we returned to our camp at K’esugi Ken, Mike, Mom and I decided to go for a walk on the Moose Flats trail again. Dad didn’t come because his hip was hurting him after a day of bouncing on a dirt road in the back seat of “Beauty” (jeep back seats are not that comfortable). Dad had broken his hip just a couple of months before the trip so it was still healing. As we headed out to the valley view point, we came upon a female moose (the trail is aptly named). She was a bit startled by our arrival. She was right next to the trail. So we stopped and kept our distance. We were able to watch her eating for quite a while. She would reach up to the tops of the alder bushes (moose love alder) and eat the tops of the branches and not the lower ones. Maybe the top ones taste better. It was actually twilight when we were hiking so we were super impressed with how well these photos turned out.

The next day, Mike and I wanted to hike the Curry Ridge trail which went up on the ridge behind our campsite and was a much longer and more difficult hike. Mom and Dad decided to join us for the first portion of the trail. It was a beautiful hike!!! Along the trail higher up and on the ridge, the low-bush cranberries were plentiful and there was evidence that black bears had frequented the trail, but it was not really recent as the bear scat we found was totally dried out.

On our way up to the ridge, Mike and I had noticed that we could see our campsite below. On our way back down the trail, we found a rock on the trail in a wide open area where we could be seen from the campground and called Dad and had him come outside and look for us. They were able to find us with the binoculars and then could see is with the naked eye. I found it absolutely amazing how often we had good cell signal in the majority of the places we camped (except for in the national park and north of Fairbanks).

The next morning we started to continue north, but I noticed it was a beautiful and very clear morning, clearer than we had seen. I suggested we hike back out to the view point on the Moose Flats trail before leaving and see if by chance Denali was peaking out of the clouds. We were very fortunate and Denali’s two peaks were fully visible as well as one of the other high peaks in the Alaska Range. This was the only time on the trip we would see anything other than a tiny piece of Denali through cloud cover. It was another tender mercy and an amazing part of the trip. I feel very blessed. All throughout this trip it was as if the Heavens were smiling on us. Another bucket list item fulfilled. See Denali–check.

After such a glorious time in Denali State Park and seeing Denali as a highlight, things couldn’t have been more opposite as the day progressed. First, we were driving along and the accelerator stopped working again. I don’t remember if I wrote about that happening in Glenallen on our way back to Wasilla a week or so earlier. In both cases, we were driving along and the accelerator pedal just stopped working. Each time, we pulled over, turned Beast off, and then restarted him. It fixed the problem and it worked again. Well from what Mike had be researching about the problem since we had it a few days before, he became very concerned about it stopping working altogether. So he was stressed about that. He uses the cruise control on Beast often and it will work when the accelerator doesn’t.

So as we were coming into the area right outside of Denali National Park on our way to our campground in Healy, Alaska, he was so worried about the accelerator so he didn’t slow down as he normally would, fearing it might cut out in a highly congested area. There happened to be a set of frost heaves and a very large one in the middle of town. He didn’t notice it with all the distration from the other traffic and the traffic light. We hit it going way to fast and slammed down hard. I wonder if we got some air on that one. Anyway, everything appeared to be OK and other than a few things falling we appeared to be fine.

We arrived in Healy at our campground and waited to get checked in for almost an hour because no one was in the office and there was no answer at the number they left for us to call. So we unhooked Beauty and mom and I went to visit the quilt shop to pick-up our next row-by-row. As we drove we noticed a loud rattle coming from underneath the jeep though it drove the same as always. It got louder when I went over bumps. We drove back and I let Mike know there was a problem with the jeep. Apparently our hard hit was not without some damage. Well, that stressed Mike and made us both concerned. We parked the jeep to check it out later after we got into our campsite.

Once we finally got checked in, we headed down into the campground. It was a terrible road with tons of deep potholes, another stressor. I had left the radio in the jeep parked up by the office, so I was guiding Mike by hand signals into our campsite. There was a puddle at the start of the campsite and it turned out to be more like a swamp. As Mike pulled into our campsite his back wheels on the passenger side started spinning. I was guiding him but was on the other side and did not notice the problem. Mike had noticed something was wrong and he thought he was stuck–more stress. I hadn’t noticed the problem and so I couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t pull forward as I was signaling him to do. A kind RV’er next to us noticed the problem and came to tell me. Luckily, we did not end up stuck because Mike was able to back up because the other tires were all on solid ground and then re-position to miss the puddle. It was a stressful few minutes after a bunch of other stresses that day. Neither of us was in a good mood after that.

This campground is the only one we stayed at that I would never stay at again. Their service had a lot to be desired. Their full-hook up sites, the most expensive sites, were in the most eyesore/dumpy part of the campsite. Now if you are tenting it or in a smaller rig and don’t want full hook-ups the sites are quite nice. The office person did not adequately warn us to beware of the puddle issue even though in retrospect she knew it might be a problem from a comment she made. I noticed plywood over other puddles around, but not this puddle. I do not recommend the Midnight Sun RV Park in Healy, Alaska. I would not stay there again.

Well, our high of seeing Denali had gone to our lowest point of the whole trip, but we survived it and really none of those things were that terrible. The jeep does have some issue, but after inspection it does not appear to be urgent. It still drives fine and all critical pieces have been triple checked and they are intact. We still have not determined what is making the rattling noise which comes and goes. If the RV accelerator does die on us, we have CoachNet which includes roadside assistance and towing coverage. And we didn’t get stuck! Looking back it wasn’t as bad as it felt at the time. A I would say, even with all of that, Heaven was still smiling on us. It all worked out. How blessed we are!!!!