Denali Family Camping Trip #6 Final entry

This is the view of the bridge over the Susitna River from Valdez Creek Road.

We decided to drive home the east route of the Denali Highway, just to say we have. We were glad we did within minutes. We started seeing caribou soon after we got on the road. Mostly, it was one and two at a time. Then we found this herd of about 20. There were more off the road on each side.

We drove up on this cow and calf caribou in the middle of the road. From the first time we saw them to the time they finally ran off the road was about 8 minutes. It was so funny, instead of getting out of the way, they just kept running down the road in front of us.

That's the McClaren river valley.

We stopped here for lunch, it's about 5 miles from Paxson, the east end/start of the Denali Highway.

Denali Family Camping Trip #5

I won't go camping unless there's gonna be some marshmallow roasting. Well, that's not true, but it is a highlight. Cathy found some gargantuan marshmallow's for this trip. Wow!

It becomes a big competition to see who can get the best roasted marshmallow. Meg did pretty good here. But she caught fire to it and you loose many points for that.

And all eyes look to my next masterpiece. They can't touch the man. They don't have the patience. Rookies!

This is a foil pan of wild mushrooms that we harvested. They are all of the puff ball variety and delicious!

Denali Family Camping Trip #4

We tried our luck against the weather and made an attempt at Rusty Hill. This was close to the road. Justice was the first one on the boulder. So we decided to take a picture. Clouds in the back ground. Waiting.

Not 50 yards from the rock we scared up a mating pair of ptarmigan. They scared the fire out of us! You can just see one of them at the top of the gravel.

I couldn't believe how close the caribou got to us.

Even this cow brought her calf in to investigate us.

This is about about as high as we got before we stopped. You can see the rain coming.

Denali Family Camping Trip #3

Our first outing took us up the mountain road towards the active gold mine in the end of the valley. Cathy spotted some caribou just on the other side of the creek. It was a cow and calf. We also watched a fox with two kits up the hill from this same spot. We also saw 2 more adult caribou grazing up the hill near the foxes.

Later, we drove back to Wendy Creek to try our hand at Arctic Grayling. We did pretty good. Everyone caught at least one fish, except for Justice, who didn't even try. Cathy caught the first and she was the only one to catch more than one. About 6! Colt looks like he's choking his.

Meg with hers.

Cathy caught the most and first, but Chase caught the biggest.

And some gave all. I didn't know what to expect for the grayling. We'd never eaten it before, and I didn't know how to clean it. So I wrapped it in foil and cooked it over camp fire. I know it doesn't look so great, but it was GOOD! On the plate is some puff ball mushrooms. I'll post more on that later.

Denali Family Camping Trip #2

This was during our first meal at camp. That mountain in the background is Rusty Hill. I took brother and cousins up there last year. We started to climb it this trip but got rained out. More on that in a later post. As for this picture with the floating Colton head, it's not photo shop, he's just decked out in his best camo.

First and only meal we ate in dry weather, hobo meals.

Closer look at the hobo meal, via self photo.

The rain's coming in the back ground!

A quick game of Uno before bed.

Denali Family Camping Trip #1

I finally took the family up to the Denali Highway for a camping trip. We had a safe, albeit wet, trip. It will take several posts to get everything on that I want to share. So sit tight and enjoy. I decided to start out with a little bit of the ride up. I looked over and Justice had a hair and was trying to tickle his mama's nose. Fortunately for him, she never woke up to it.

It Reached the 70's!

So all the redneck families in the neighborhood took advantage of the rare sunny day. Funny, I think we were the only ones taking advantage of such a pretty day. It only rained for the previous 13 days, surely the yard needed some water. I think the official high was 76. Very nice.

More Bear Paw Festivities

On Saturday, Colt and Cathy were in a parade, they walked with the VFW, their charter organization.

Today, after the Run With the Bears, the kids were in an ice cream eating contest. Meg was too dainty.

Colt took third. Check out the little fellow in the back ground. "Here's you ice cream!"

And Justice had a great pre-game stare down, but he didn't win. The tiny little thing beside him with the pigtails took third in their age group. She's cute.

Beautiful horse.

Running With the Bears

Every summer Eagle River has it's version of a community festival called the Bear Paw Festival. One of the events is the Running With the Bears, 300 yard run. Here's my three entrants.

Justice and Meg.

Colt passing on the outside.

Sheep Scouting

My buddy Eric and I went sheep scouting. It was nice the first 8 hrs on the first day. Then pretty much rained the rest of the time. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that my 4wd was jacked on my ATV. While the weather was nice we saw about 200 sheep. That's hopeful. We didn't see any here. We had a break in the weather while we climbed to the top of this mountain to see what was on the other side.

And this is what we had on the top. You can see the sheep trail on the ridge.

This was on the way back down. Lupine, and quite possibly, the edge of the world.

We also saw a ptarmigan hen with 4 chicks. You can see her here, the chicks are lost in the fog. She was very anxious about our presence. She darted all over trying to corral them all away from us. She left three alone to get the fourth that had strayed to the left. It reminded me of the Parable of the Lost Sheep in in Luke 15.

We Got Some Sunshine!

So Cathy let the kids plant flowers. Loxi supervised.

Happy 4th!