The Denali Highway

Saturday, June 30

The “bible” of Alaska’s (few) roads is Milepost, an annual, phone-book sized description of every mile of every major (and semi-major) road in the state; we’ve used it throughout our travels this month.  Today’s drive, on the Denali Highway from Cantwell to Paxson (population 16!), was covered in minute detail, with many of the views along the way described as “huge.”  And so they were.

 We spent five and a half hours driving the 130 miles of the unpaved highway, and it wasn’t only road conditions that made our progress so slow. Reputedly one of Alaskans’ favorite roads, the scenery is spectacular.  (It just occurred to me that I should go back through this trip’s posts to see how many times that last phrase has been repeated.) Most of the day was bright and clear and the views of the peaks of the Alaska Range, glaciers, lakes, meadows were poster-perfect.  There was a photo op around every bend and we tried not to miss a single one. 

By the time we reached Paxson, the skies had darkened and we had a little rain; we’ve gotten used to rain moving in and moving on in pretty short order in many of the places we’ve traveled on this trip. We continued on to Gakona, more an intersection than a town, where we have great log cabin rooms facing the Copper River. 

(From Tom. One of the requirements of car rental in Alaska is that you agree not to drive on any unpaved roads. That is nearly impossible unless you spend all your time in Anchorage since getting to most interesting places usually involves an unpaved road.  Having driven 130 miles on unpaved road today, Jim and I spent a few minutes at our new digs running our hands over the car and rinsing off the dirt that had accumulated. As we started the task someone walked by and said, "Looks like you were on a gravel road". Hope we pass inspection tomorrow. )

This is our last night in Alaska, and we’re all delighted with what we’ve seen and happy with how smoothly our travel partnership has gone. With late-night flights tomorrow, we’ll have all day to drive back to Anchorage and revel in what Milepost assures us will be yet another route full of that spectacular scenery we’ve found at every turn this month.