Into the Wild: Denali Adventure - Part I

FRIDAY: It was definitely hard going back to work Friday morning after our 14 mile hike the day before. The base was hosting their Family Medicine Children's Health Fair where dependents of enlisted soldiers come to base for physicals. There were children running around everywhere which may have deterred people from coming to the pharmacy as the place looked very busy. Therefore, Friday was a fairly manageable day. I spent the morning in the inpatient pharmacy with Angela, a contract pharmacist, who is really awesome and loves what she does. I believe I get to spend a couple more mornings with her and possibly go on rounds with her as well. As for my afternoon, I spent some time at the kid's health fair where I directed traffic mostly. Towards the end, an airman and myself watched one of the kids while his mom tried to get stuff done at the hospital. The 5 year old was really excited to have his Mountain Dew which he demonstrated multiple times of how he is able to chug it...great. Why do mom's let their kids drink that stuff?

After work, we quickly packed for Denali National Park and hit the road. About 2 hours North of Anchorage is Talkeetna where you can take a plane ride to see Mt. McKinley. Since the cloud coverage is so thick up in the mountains, you can only see McKinley about 20% of the time. On our drive to Talkeetna, I'm pretty sure we saw a glimpse of it beyond the town! (This is still up for debate though). While in Talkeetna, we stopped for dinner at Twister Creek Restaurant, Home of Denali Brewing Co where I departed from my usual fish and chips and tried a prime rib sandwich with au jus. Celeste and myself also tried a couple of the locally brewed beers: Cleopatra's Kiss (earthy flavor) and Agave Gold (sweeter flavor). After dinner, we checked out the place next door since it was advertising "homemade ice cream". This was my favorite part of Talkeetna: homemade pumpkin cheesecake ice cream! I guess in answer to my Trivia Tuesday question, up North is where the Alaskan's are consuming all their ice cream.

We hopped back on the highway and headed up to Healy, AK just North of the Denali Park entrance where our hotel was. We got in a little around 11:30pm which meant daylight, so driving that late really wasn't too bad.

This was the office of the Denali Park Hotel (really motel).

I wish I would've taken a picture of the entire front of the Escape as it was covered in a ridiculous amount of bugs. I'm pretty sure the mosquitoes took revenge on us the rest of the weekend after killing so many of their kin.

After unpacking/getting settled in, I stood outside the hotel and watched the sunset behind the mountains which was really beautiful. (I tried to get some pictures but I just couldn't capture how awesome it really was with my point-and-shoot.) And it almost got dark! But the midnight sun didn't completely set and so it remained rather light well into the morning. I also got eaten alive by mosquitoes as I only had shorts and a t-shirt on which wasn't smart on my part. I learned to wear pants and long sleeves no matter the temperature outside. Though I stayed up later than I should have on Friday night, I really didn't get much sleep that night as the excitement for Saturday's adventures kept me awake. Check out Part II for more on that.