27 July 2018. Denali Highway
We left our campsite near the Maclaren River and started the slow four miles back to the Denali Highway. We were still disappointed that we didn’t see any moose or caribou on this road, despite having to repeatedly avoid piles of “signs” they left on the road.
When we got back to the Denali Highway, we found that the road construction had moved east such that we were now in the middle of a section that used a Pilot Car. I still don’t know if they figured out where we came from, but there we were trying to get through…
We had another 10+ miles of dirt road, followed by an uneventful 28 miles of pavement to complete our journey across the Denali Highway. There were still nice vistas and the Alaskan range to our north. And we did catch sight of a fox running across the road!
We eventually came to the Richardson Highway and turned north. Our goal for today was modest, just get a total of 100 miles driven for the day…
We didn’t get very far traveling north on the Richardson Highway when we found a nice turn off for lunch. We went about 1 1/2 miles down a dirt road and had lunch in front of the Gulkana Glacier we had seen before from the Denali Highway.
The Richardson Highway runs north/south and has the Trans-Alaska Pipeline visibly running next to it some of the time. We stopped at an interpretive display and got some pictures. This section of the pipeline is in “earthquake country”, and the display talked about the construction techniques required to make sure that the shaking of the ground wouldn’t result in an oily mess.
We found a campsite (yeah, we were the only ones here when we pulled in) at the Donnelly Creek Recreation Site and Campground. Nice and peaceful, at least until the rental motorhomes started showing up around 6pm. We did get a short hike done out to one of the “braids” on the Delta river.
