Denali National Park

After getting my oil changed, I headed south towards Denali National Park. I was very excited; even the name sounds exotic and dangerous, right? Anyway, the danger started long before I'd gotten to Denali - there was about 30 miles of construction on the highway soon after I left Fairbanks. Highway construction up here is very different than in the lower 48, BTW. In the L48, it typically means lots of traffic as everyone gets into one good lane while watching the construction take place on the side. Not so here - it means that you will be driving on one barely drivable lane (of the two) while construction takes place on the other and opposing traffic waits its turn on the shitroad. It is not smooth, it is not pretty - it is usually dirt and loose gravel and mud and, if you're really lucky, some sand and loose dirt, too. Therefore, if you are riding a motorcycle, you take this shit pretty seriously (some guy had to be airlifted out of a construction zone in the Yukon the day I went through), even more so if it is raining.

Just as I hit the construction, it started raining. Nice....

I got through each section OK, but my nerves were pretty fucking shot by the end. I have found that the best way to deal with this crap is to find a rut you like and just plow forward along it and hope to God the RV that made it didn't make any hair-pin turns or you're screwed. More than once I felt the DL going sideways and just said "FUCK IT!" and blasted forward. It is interesting that going faster through this sort of stuff is actually a positive thing - this is something I'm still learning, I guess. It has been too many years since I rode dirtbikes and assumed I'd bounce off the ground, perhaps.

Anyway, I eventually got through the constuction morass and headed south towards Denali, visions of Mt. McKinley (what we Honkies call it - the Natives still call it Denali) dancing in my head. When I got near the park, it was pretty evident by the hordes of American tourists, RVs, and the craven businesses created to fleece, I mean service them.

Well, I was here. This was - to me - the ultimate goal of the trip. I've been a fan of big mountains for my whole life, and I wanted to see North America's biggest and baddest.