Day 9

• Thursday, June 30
• Seward, AK to Denali National Park, AK
• 361 miles

We have a scrumptious breakfast in lovely Seward and I buy a perfect t-shirt called “Alaska Snacktime“, designed by Ray Troll of Ketchikan, Alaska. We ride North on the beautiful Kenai Peninsula and realize that if we ever get back up here again, it will require a complete ride from end to end to do it justice.

As we pass back through Anchorage, we stop at the Honda dealership and pick up a windshield for Trev. The naked bike windblast just gets too tiring after a few days. We did this before on another trip in Montana and that windshield must be gathering dust back home. Oh well. We also stop at Denali Harley in Wasilla so our two Harley riders can buy t-shirts. We head up the Parks Highway and stop at what is deemed the best vantage point for viewing Denali but as the sign says, the mountain makes it own weather and is rarely visible. Further up the road, we encounter some of that weather but as we ride into the rain shadow caused by Denali, the rain stops and the road dries up.

We enter the Park and there are signs everywhere warning of wildlife but all we see are red squirrels playing in the campground. We choose a primo site in the Wolf campground and get set up. We head over to the visitor’s center and learn that the bus tour of the park is an 8 hour affair. Most of the park’s roads are closed to visitor traffic so it’s the only way to see the park’s interior but after so much saddle time, sitting in a bus for that long really turns us off on that notion. We decide that tomorrow, on our day off, we’ll ride over to the big visitor’s complex, ride what roads are open to the public and just generally take it easy.

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