Back to Fairbanks

Day 41  Monday July 25, 2016                  Fairbanks, AK    Chena River Wayside SRA, site 12

156 miles           11.4 mpg

Time to leave Teklanika River Campground.  Left at 08:15 on a nice sunny day.  The kind of day to go on a tour of the park and see Denali.

We had a real pleasant drive along the park road towards the park entrance.  Then out of nowhere, I looked over and saw Denali rising above a mountain range in all its glory.  We stopped and took pictures at various pullovers.  I was unaware that Denali could be seen in that section of the Park.  It made our day.  It finally came out just as we were leaving.

Check it out:

The white mountain in the background is Denali.

To the left, is one of Denali's friends in the same range.

Marsha took this close-up.

We stopped at the visitor center and poked around the book store there.  Bought a Denali T-shirt.  Then we stopped at the Riley Creek Mercantile.  Marsha bought some stamps and mailed off some postcards.

Our last errand on the way out was to dump our tanks and top off the fresh water tank.

Pulled onto the Parks Highway and headed north at 10:15. We stopped in a little bitty town called Nenana to see if we could find a place to have something to eat.  We were both hungry.  We found a little café called Roughwoods Café.  It was a unique place, outside and inside. 

This was a neat little place in a tiny little town off the Parks Highway.

They had all day breakfast and I ordered the local’s favorite, called Jose Stacked.  It was really good.  Hash browns, with melted cheddar, deli ham, two fried eggs, all topped with salsa and sour cream.  I would order it again, and even try to duplicate it at home.  We had pancakes for breakfast, but it didn’t hold us over very well. 

The Oliver was filthy from the drive to Teklanika the day we arrived.  And it was still filthy.  When we arrived at Fairbanks we found an RV park with an RV wash and we went there to use it.  It took a while but we got it cleaned.  Then we moved on to the same campground we were at the last time we were in Fairbanks.  The Chena River Wayside SRA.  There were some of the same people still there!  The losers that look like squatters.  More on that later.

One of the first things we did was go to REI and get me a day pack.  I lost my 20-year-old day pack or misplaced it and couldn’t find it before the trip.  So we decided to replace it with something more up to date.  It would have come in handy on the two bus trips we took at Denali.

Afterwards we went to dinner at Bank’s Ale House and had a $25.00 15” pizza that wasn’t very good, but it was still pizza.

Then we just relaxed back at the campground looking at our Denali photographs, all happy to have finally seen it.