More of Alaska, 8-2-19

Drunken trees, tilted trees, or a drunken forest, is a stand of trees displaced from their normal vertical alignment. This most commonly occurs in northern subarctic taiga forests of black spruce under which discontinuous permafrost or ice wedges have melted, causing trees to tilt at various angles. We have seen a lot of these.

Dave grilled some salmon for us again. This time it is red salmon. It is good but a bit oilier and more fishy tasting than the silver salmon we had previously. Dave enjoyed it more than I did but I know I will enjoy eating it again to. That’s a good thing because we have three more packages in our freezer!

Inuit rain suit made from seal bladders.

On our way from Anchorage to Cantwell, we took a detour to Palmer to a muskox farm. These animals normally live farther north, in or near the arctic circle but we had not gone north far enough to see them and I still wanted to see some. They are one of the few mammals left over from the ice ages.

We took this route to Cantwell because it headed back toward and got close to Denali National Park again. We had photos of the peaks of Mount Denali but were hoping for weather that would let us see the entire mountain. We were not lucky enough for that again but we are still thrilled to have seen the peaks.

Boondocking at Milepost 201 south of Cantwell, Alaska.

Leaving Cantwell, we drove the Denali Highway to Glenallen, Alaska. This is a 134 mile road but 100 miles of it are dirt. To make matters worse, it was raining the first couple of hours so the trailer and truck got filthy. It was a beautiful trip that took about 4 hours but I was happy we took this route.

It was Sunday and we had left early so stopped for our
Sunday Bloody Marys and lunch along the way.

This glacier was elusive. It took me many tries to get its photo.

We decided to boondock again. This was a parking lot by a river where a lot of fishermen launch their boats. We stayed for two days.

We met two couples here. One couple was from Texas by way of California but travel to someplace in Canada every summer. They were singers and sat in the parking lot with their guitars and sang to us for evening entertainment. Another couple who joined us are also from Minnesota and are only traveling for a few weeks, to decide if this is what they want to do when they retire.