June 19, 2014
Unfortunately, the weathermen was right
again. It rained all night last night. It continued to rain all day
with a few intermittent times of very light rain or no rain for short
periods of time. It is very wet here in Denali. Absolutely no sun
today and no chance of seeing the mountain out in all its glory. We
feel so sorry for all the tent campers and so blessed that we are not
tent camping. We have decided that while we generally will not admit
to being too old for much of anything, we are too old to tent camp –
and especially tent camp in the rain!
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| One of the roads in Riley Creek Campground |
So what did we do today in the rain?
We got up around 4 am to take care of some online financial business
because our Verizon data is so much faster when everyone else is
still asleep. Then since it was pouring rain at that time – we
went back to sleep. Can't remember when we have done that. After
breakfast we made another drive to Savage River, but this time did not
hike. Yes, we know that the Alaskans have told us we can't let the
weather stop us from doing anything we plan to do, but today we just
didn't want to hike in the rain. We saw people doing it and if we
only had a day or two here we would have put on the rain gear and
been out there too, but we are blessed to not be on a strict schedule
so we wimped out. The drive was again nice, but unfortunately we saw
no wildlife today. We stopped back by the Visitors Center to watch
the Denali Movie, and listen to a ranger presentation on “Raising
Families in Denali.” Both we very good. The movie was primarily
awesome video of the park during different seasons, with musical
accompaniment. The presentation was on how the moose, bears, and
wolves raise their young in the harsh Denali environment. There were
lots of cute baby animal pictures.
The Denali Music Festival is this
week and this afternoon was “Concert Black” which was different
and interesting. There was a segment where each instrument, bass,
drums and flute were explained, and different techniques of playing
them demonstrated. The drummer said the members of the group have
spent most of our lives learning to play these instruments the right
way and now they spend most of their time experimenting with
different sounds and playing them the wrong way. They got sound out
of those instruments we had never heard before. The music was
improvisational music more like a jam session.
Tonight was the
Denali Orchestra Concert featuring two new compositions inspired by
the Alaska wilderness. These were quite good and definitely had a
Denali feel to the music.
Between those two musical events we
decided to have Christmas in July again. Dinner and then popcorn and
a Christmas movie. Yes, it was sappy and had a happy ending – just
the way they are suppose to.
Not a very exciting day. It's still
raining tonight. Sure hope it stops tomorrow.
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