Down the Alaska Parks Highway

It's Tuesday, July 9th and we are camping at the Susitna Landing Campground in Willow, Alaska about 85 miles north of Anchorage. This is a lovely, secluded campground with large electric only sites for $25 a night; easily large enough for our 35 ft RV and truck. We were amazed that we could get three spots here without a reservation; in fact, there were plenty of sites available. This is a very quiet campground with good site separation. I flew the drone to get a bird's eye view of this campground and the river nearby. We're hoping to catch some wildlife with the drone in the future; maybe a moose or a bear...fingers crossed!

We needed three sites because on Monday, July 8th we were joined by our good friends, Jeff and Dana Guidi from Santa Rosa, California. They made reservations earlier in the year to fly up and rent a Class "C" RV in Anchorage and join us for two weeks exploring the beautiful Alaska wilderness! We now have an Alaskan tour group of six explorers, two Alliance 35' fifth wheel trailers and one 28' Minnie Winnie Class "C" motor coach.

Prior to their arrival, the original four of us spent Friday night, July 5th, in Anderson, Alaska, just 27 miles south from Nenana on the Parks Highway (Alaska 3). The town has a beautiful city park called Riverside Park. It's off the beaten path, approximately 6 miles from the highway, on our way to Denali National Park. The road getting there is good, with the last 1/2 mile a dirt road but in good condition. There are approximately 18 spaces with 30 amp power, open, no trees, no water or sewer but they do have a dump station and water on the way out. We parked that night with plenty of room, for $25 with electric hookups. We faced a very large grassy field and hoped to see some wildlife. I stayed up until almost midnight to get a photograph of the sunset before the predicted weather deteriorated.

From Riverside Park we continued the 81 miles past the Denali National Park entrance to the junction where Highway 3 and Highway 8 meet in Cantwell, Alaska. Highway 8 is called the Denali Highway and connects Paxson, Alaska with Cantwell running east to west. It is a 135 mile primarily dirt/gravel road with spectacular views of Denali. On Saturday, July 6 it was cloudy with light rain so we missed out on the mountainous view surrounding this locale. We explored the Denali Highway from Cantwell to about a mile east and found a gravel roadside turnout with our windows looking north where we spent the night...Alaska camping for free! We were hoping the weather might improve and we would wake up to a spectacular view of the mountains, but no such luck.

Unfortunately the weekend weather was not cooperating with our wishes. It remained pretty miserable with on and off rain, sometimes heavy. We decided on Sunday, July 7 to continue south, another 42 miles on the Parks Highway to Denali State Park at the Viewpoint North Campground just north of Talkeetna, Alaska. The RV park is a paved parking lot. The description on Campendium's website described it this way: "A standard rest area parking lot that you pay a fee to stay overnight, any size vehicle, with side by side parking. Great place for an overnight, with better views than a Walmart parking lot."

Parking on pavement, with the rain pouring down, was preferred to parking on mud and gravel. We parked so our trailer's doors faced each other and all our awnings opened up to create a covered patio area protected from the rain. Still no views of Denali. By now, we knew our reservations at Denali were canceled for July 8th through the 11th due to the Riley Fire, so we decided to continue south on Monday morning looking for better weather and a shorter drive for Jeff and Dana. Thankfully, we found it at Susitna Landing.

Jeff and Dana arrived around 5 PM and we all enjoyed catching up after introducing them to Sean and Kathy, our traveling companions from Erie, PA. Karen made a big pot of spaghetti with red sauce, a salad and warm french bread that we enjoyed together while soaking up the sun when it would periodically peek out from the clouds. This was a welcome warm respite to go with Sean's baked brownies for dessert. A perfect ending to the evening. Tomorrow we will explore Talkeetna, AK.