Day 55 - On to Denali National Park

A Bit Of Confusion And The World's Worst Laundromat.

It was still quite hazy from the wildfire smoke this morning, but it was much clearer than yesterday. We were heading north to Denali National Park this morning and had a rather relaxed start. It was a pleasant drive with only a stop at Denali Fish, a fishing guide service that even had its own ponds. Harry wanted to check them out. It was interesting but pricey. The ponds were well stocked with Rainbow Trout and Grayling, but it was catch and release only unless you paid extra for the fish you kept...$20 per fish under 16". That was in addition to the fishing guide fee. No fishing today.

It was rather confusing when we got to the park. We had to check in at the reservations desk in the Riley Creek Merchantile. Since we had extended our stay by adding a day at a time as sites became available, we had four sets of reservations in two names and one of our reservations also included a site for Harry and Sally, who had their own three sets of reservations...is that clear? The reservation clerk handled it well and we each came away with requisite site tags, bus passes and road permit for our two week stay.

The sites at the campgrounds in the park are not assigned and you just drive around to find empty ones. We arrived just before checkout time so there was a good selection. We do have the added challenge of trying to find a pair of adjacent sites, but we did...twice. It took two tries, but we have nice open sites in Wolf Loop. 

After finding the first pair of sites we drove back to the Merchantile to dump our waste tanks and fill our water tanks. That accomplished, we went back to the campground and found two nicer sites, the ones we are in now.

Today was a day of chores, the first of which was laundry. Although there is a laundromat at the Merchantile, Ellen and Sally wanted to try one in Healy, ten miles away as it was supposedly attached to a grocery store and was part of an RV park and also had showers, another thing on our afternoon list. Off we went. This was a mistake.

The grocery store was actually a gas station convenience store and the laundry was underneath and was park of the RV park. A first glance it was okay but we had to go back to the store to get tokens for the machines. By the time we got back down to the laundry, Sally had started her wash and found out, after the fact, that many of the other machines were broken. There weren't enough working machines left for us to do our laundry at the same time. Then there were the showers...it was a new low. I thought the showers at the Tanana Valley campground in Fairbanks were the worst, but these easily outdid them. Ellen and I decided to go back to the park. Since Sally had already started, they toughed it out.

We came back and used the local laundry, which had its own problems, but at least it was clean, as were the showers, which were long and hot. We soothed our frustrations with coffee and ice cream from the Merchantile. When Harry and Sally returned, found out they'd soothed their's at the 49th State Brewing Company on the way back. They even brought back. "Crowler", a quart can, for Ellen. It was shared by all (except me) at dinner...quite tasty I'm told.

After all that, it was back to camp for dinner, the craft brew, another round of Ellen's excellent blonde brownies, a walk, and contemplation about what to do tomorrow, predicted to be a rainy day,