Days 1 and 2 in Alaska

Warning. Blogger has had 2 glasses of wine and 6 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. Typos and tangents may occur.

yesterday is much as you would imagine it...17 hours of travel time in either a car or a plane. Surprisingly smooth but loooong nonetheless. After two delirium inducing flights we were in a car on an Alaskan highway headed for the highest mountain n the USA. Very exciting. Very exhausing.

Route 3 to Denali is a two lane highway that is undergoing some serious renovations. After a pretty major delay for roadwork we started to get into the scenic part of AK (PS Anchorage is a shithole Wasilla is ok if you like target and Sara Palin and stuff.) Mountains everywhere just jutting out of the ground like they owned the place. When we were about an hour from Denali we started to see really huge mounians.

Michael: "Wow those are some big mount...holy shit that's McKinley."
Me: What that sticking up out of the clouds?"
Michael: "Yeah!"

Honestly it must have been the cloud placement or something but the mountains we were looking at and marveling at their size were absoutely dwarfed by the peak sticking up through the clouds. I laughed.

How many of you took band in school? Show of hands? OK put your hands down.

My band teacher introduced us to all of the instruments in the orchestra our first day of band class. From the highest note on the piccolo to the lowest note on the basoon. I remember when he blew the lowest note on the basoon I lauged. I didn't mean to it was just the absurdity of the note. It was so low it was just funny. I had the same sensation when I saw McKinley. The absurdity of the size of this mountain was just comical. Mountains we were in awe of were just a joke. I was surrounded by mountains that were taller than any I had ever seen and here was this crazy peak making a mockery of them. It was like the dude that came in and built a mansion in a shantytown.

We arrived at the McKinley creekside cabins and let me just say that if you ever come here this is where you should stay. Our cabin is right on the creek and the white noise is to die for (Amy this is your spot!) the food is amazing and the pillows rock. Pillows are big in my book.

We went into Denali today and hiked a bit. We saw pretty much every animal you can see in Denali. including a bear in the road! A bear in the road playing with a traffic cone!

Pictures will follow. It's hard to upload here but I'll do it soon.