After a lovely breakfast, we headed to the Wal-Mart in Wasilla. We picked up some essentials (more ice, beef jerky, plastic utensils) and bought some food at McDonald’s for lunch even though we were still full from breakfast.
Valerie consulted the gigantic Milepost we have been lugging around and found Iditarod HQ was only a few miles away so we decided to make a stop there. The puppies were fantastically cute! Valerie held one and Bryon enjoyed petting them and distracting them from their naps. We also watched some people ride around on a wheeled sled pulled by a full team of dogs and were able to pet the dogs. After quickly browsing the gift shop we headed back toward the freeway.
Even though we were still full from breakfast and still had the McDonald’s food we’d bought, we also decided to pick up some food from Arby’s due to Valerie’s fear of running out of food in Denali. We are planning to take an 11 hour bus ride tomorrow into the park where there’s no food available at all for purchase (contrast this with Canadian national parks like Banff and Jasper which have entire towns in them). We ended up purchasing 6 Jr. Roast Beef sandwiches for the upcoming tour.
Despite stopping by a Mt. McKinley viewpoint on our drive to the park, we failed to see its famed peak due to the cloud cover. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow. We eventually arrived at the hostel and checked into our Yanert room which is typically a girls dormitory but since we have rented out the whole thing Bryon can stay there too. Tomorrow we will change to one of the Iceworm rooms.
After checking in we drove the 13 miles to the Wilderness Access Center to pick up our bus tickets for tomorrow. We watched an interesting short video on the history of the park, and stopped by 229 Park, the most highly rated restaurant in the Denali area on TripAdvisor. We had a quick dinner at the bar (since the earliest time we could get a table was 8:45pm), and went back to the hostel.
Tonight will be an early night since our tour begins bright and early tomorrow at 7:15am.