Day 98: Brighter Day in Denali NP

July 21, 2014

Today the new snow from yesterday was gone. It was in the 50's when we got up today with some hazy sun. We went all day without rain and high about 65. YEA!

We got an early wake-up call at 4:00 when we started hearing a strange noise. First we wondered if someone had their generator on, then figured that wasn't right because all the sites have electricity. We then realized Fred was the source of the noise and jumped out of bed to see what was going on. The heat pump for the front of the coach was making an awful noise. We cut it off and all was quiet. Hoped we didn't wake up our neighbors. But then we smelled something like a burn smell. So quickly dressed and on top of the rig to check it out. Thankfully all was well – no heat or fire. By the way – lots of light at 4:00 am – no need for a flashlight to get on top of the coach. We tried turning the heat pump back on later – after 8:00 am - and thought it was going to be OK at first then it started a sound like it was running too fast. We just shut it back off. We will have to check it out, but not today. We will not need it for warmth as we have the furnace and the rear heat pump. When we get back to the lower 48 we will need it for air conditioning so we may put off doing anything until we are back in the lower 48. Anyone know a good RV Air conditioner repair person – maybe in Montana or Wyoming??

Later in the morning we went to meet with the Denali National Park Historian/Curator. We let her go through Aunt Jean's Alaska photo album and she was very interested. She said they have very little in the way of photographs and material from the early 1940's. We gave her a digital copy we made before leaving Alabama and will see what happens next. She also was going to contact the person with the Museum of the North at Fairbanks University and we will try to meet with them later this week.

Entrance to the collections area of the park

After that meeting we went back into the park. Today we found a Willow Ptarmigan (Alaska state bird) family on the banks of the river. The young are growing up fast so they will be ready to survive this winter. We took way too many pictures – we love digital cameras. We also found out the Ptarmigan don't like the Arctic ground squirrels. The grown female – mom we presume – jumped toward and hissed at the squirrel that came too close and he quickly backed off. Saw that happen twice with two different squirrels. It was too funny.

We also saw a pika – sort of an Alaskan rat – but he was too fast for pictures. Later we hiked deeper into the park to try to get a better look of “the mountain”, Denali – and did. The mountain was out today, but it was too hazy for good pictures. We were going to go further south in the truck to be closer and hopefully better pictures, but decided it would be fruitless due to the haze. While hiking trying to get a better picture of Denali we saw two caribou, but we could only really see their antlers because they were lying down in bushes. We were pretty close to Savage River so we suspect they were the same two we photographed a couple of days ago.

We also got a picture of the ugliest Magpie we have seen. Don't know what happened to his beak.

Wanda and Jeff are coming over in a little while for brownies and ice cream and we will compare our travel notes. We plan to leave Denali in the morning headed to Fairbanks.