Thursday, 8/3 – Anchorage to Denali

We had a pretty easy day of riding. We had only 237 miles to cover. We pulled into a gas station for our morning stop and learned that coffee was free. A couple of very nice ladies run the place. We bought donuts and couple of other things, so the free coffee proved to be an excellent marketing tool. We also discovered that the gas price was 10 cents less than the next station a half-mile up the road.

They had a wide variety of items stocked, making it more a general store than a convenience store.

Every stretch of road has at least one construction zone. We went through three or four today. This one was one-way and had a pilot car to take us through.

A little farther on, the road provided a view of Denali, and it wasn’t covered with clouds! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a place to pull over and take pictures.

About 20 minutes later, we found a nice state park pulloff for lunch.

This is the view of Denali from the state park lookout. We were disappointed that in the short time between seeing it from the road and arriving at the park, it had covered with clouds.

We stopped a couple of times at scenic overlooks. This one had a good view of trees.

We got a few good shots of some mountains at this pull-off.

We went to the bus depot to purchase tickets for tomorrow’s bus tour and to watch one of the movies about the early days of the park.

It was raining as we checked in, so we parked the bikes and went around the corner for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin.

The rain didn’t last long, so it was dry when we set up and while Beth cooked dinner.

After dinner we went back to the boardwalk to explore and have some ice cream.