Grayling

Wednesday, July 27 Blueberry Fields Forever
This morning, Mike awoke excited to check out the Brushkana River.  A sign posted near the campground indicated the presence of grayling and both brown and black bears.  After a quick breakfast, we walked downriver with hopes of encountering one of the aforementioned species in particular.   It proved to be a
Worthwhile endeavor.  Sara found blueberries all along the river.  Mike caught his first ever grayling ever.  

Even though grayling is said to be excellent table fare, our cooler is already quite off-smelling so the fish was released. 
After the morning fishing trip, we packed up camp and prepared to depart.  As we were filling up our water bottles and packing the car a friendly poodle attempted to hitch a ride and jumped into the passenger seat.  A few minutes were spent trying to coax the dog out of the car before we could take off.
 The Denali Hwy. proved to be a wildlife viewing & trip highlight.  While driving we were lucky to see: ermine, arctic ground squirrel, marmot, moose & caribou.  At one point, we met a mother & baby caribou on the road.  Quite unwilling to share the road, (& us unable to take any other route) mother & baby ran awkwardly in front of our slowly moving car for over a mile before finally turning off into the bushes.  

As our car moved through the alpine tundra at an elevation of 4,000+ feet, we were also treated to beautiful vistas of distant mountains & lakes.

Early afternoon, we reached the end of the gravel and the Denali Hwy. We turned north on the Richardson Hwy. in Paxson.  From there we followed the road & the Alyeska Pipeline northwards to Delta Junction. 

In Delta Junction, we fueled up (whew!), failed at finding showers (hmmm…), and headed out of town on the Alaska (Alcan) Hwy. 

I am writing this in the car at 7:05 p.m. Alaska time, about 9 miles west of Tok.  Taking advantage of the long Alaskan days (it never seems to get dark!) our goal this evening is to reach Chicken, AK.  There we plan to find camping and hopefully a shower.  Our odometer says we’ve traveled a total of 5, 201 miles thus far on our grand adventure.