Monday, June 14

On Monday morning we quickly ate a sweet roll and headed to Denali National Park at 5:45 for a tundra wildlife tour.

Everything about Denali National Park is big: the scenery, the mountains, the incredible beauty, and the animals. The Tundra Wildlife Tour was an excellent way to spot the wildlife for which Alaska is so famous: We saw moose, caribou, dall sheep, eagles and more. The tour was fully narrated by a naturalist and we traveled 53 miles into Denali National Park to the Toklat River. The tour focused on scouting out the wildlife in the park, in addition to explaining the historical and geographical background of the area.

The park was established as Mt. McKinley National Park on Feb. 26, 1917. The original park was designated a wilderness area and incorporated into Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980. The Park was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1976.Denali Park is also home to North America's highest mountain, Mt. McKinley, towering over 20,300 feet tall.

These are some of the wildlife and scenes of Denali National Park.


Mountain View	Moose	Harry & Laura	Caribou	Mt. McKinley


Caribou	Dall Sheep	Artic Ground Squirrel	Glacier water and clear water coming together	View in Park

After the tundra wildlife tour of the park, we once again boarded the train for the ride to Fairbanks, arriving in Fairbanks about 8:00 pm.

We met our bus and driver for the next three days who took us to the Bridgewater Hotel. This was a hotel that only stayed open from May through September because of not enough tourists coming to Fairbanks during the winter months. The staff were extremely nice and welcomed us with punch and cookies. They also prepared an excellent breakfast each morning while we were there. Fairbanks also had a log cabin visitors center one half a block away that offered free internet access to visitors, so, we were able to check our email and send messages to family from there.

As gold miners headed into the Klondike, there were. a hardy few who decided to make their way into Alaska. One of these miners was Felix Pedro, an Italian immigrant who searched for gold in the hills of the Tanana Valley.

One spring day in 1902, Pedro saw the smoke of a steam boat unloading on the banks of the Chena River. He headed in its direction hoping to buy supplies.

Meanwhile E.T. Barnette was arguing with the skipper of the riverboat Lavelle Young. Barnette had paid the captain to take him up the Tanana River to the present day site of Tanacross. Unfortunately, the Tanana could not be passed And the Chena also proved too shallow. According to their agreement, the captain put Barnette and his large stock of' trade goods ashore near the present site of First Avenue and Cushman Street.

E.T. Barnette was not pleased with the prospect of establishing his trading post so far from the existing gold fields. However, when Felix Pedro arrived in camp, Barnette changed his mind. If there were prospectors in the area, money could be made here. The

The Bridgewater Hotel is located practically on the same spot where E.T. Barnette established his trading post.


Bridgewater Hotel	Fairbanks at 11:00 pm	Fairbanks from the air	Fairbanks from the air