Denali National Park Part 3 of 3

This is the last part of the Denali National Park blogs. Our activities

Our caravan enjoyed a dinner theater the first night in  Denali.  The rib dinner was served country-style.  Servers performed the show after the meal.  A combination of music, comedy and drama made for a great entertainment.  It was a relaxing activity after a long day’s ride.

Entry to Husky Homestead

 The next day we all jumped on a bus for a Husky Homestead tour.  Jeff King is the owner of the Husky Homestead and is a Musher.  A Musher is someone who guides the team of sled dogs over the snow.  Jeff owns a team of sled dogs and is recognized as the “Winningest Musher in the World.” His victories include not only the 1,049 mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1993, 1996, 1998, and 2006, but also over two dozen first place finishes in races all across Alaska.  Jeff gave a presentation to our group about the dogs and a demonstration of how the dog team works. Below are some pictures taken at the homestead.

There's no snow, so they use a four-wheeler
for demonstration..

Jeff King giving a presentation.

The next day Buck and I joined some of our caravan for a jeep ride. The jeeps hold four people and each person supposedly gets to drive ¼ of the time if they choose.  We were the odd men out, so we rode with the owner who served as the tail-gunner.  The trip was very interesting.  We crossed big mud puddles, went through narrow passages and enjoyed a meal prepared by a wilderness cook.  The cook has a camp where he stays 6 days a week and his only job is to prepare 3 meals per day for the jeep tours that come by. He loves his job.  He is a recent graduate of a university in Philadelphia and just needed to get some fresh air, he said. You can see him making sourdough bread which he served with the stew for lunch.

Christopher McCandless was also tired of the busy and frustrating role as a college student, so after graduation from Emory University in the eastern part of the US, he, too, left and came to Alaska to get the fresh air.  He had no experience in the wild and did not prepare himself for the journey on which he was about to embark.   He just wondered around for several months and ended up on Stampede Road (the road that Buck and I took for the jeep ride.)  By this time it was winter and he crossed a river that was completely covered with ice.  He didn’t know the area or have a map, so he was unaware that he had crossed it.  He found an old abandoned bus and made that his home.  When Spring came, the ice melted on the river and that presented a new problem for him.  He could not get back across the river.  He didn’t know where he was and he had very little to eat.  He found berries, probably red ones, and ate those.  Unfortunately the red berries made him sick and he began to lose weight.  When hunters found him dead in the bus, he weighed only 60 pounds.  It was estimated that he had been dead for around two weeks. 

The story of this young man is captured in Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild. Buck has this book.  Our son, Jason, gave it to him for Christmas several years ago.  A movie has also been made of this experience.   Below is a picture of the bus that was used in the movie.  Also, there’s a picture of an article in the “49^th “State Journal.”

Just in case you can’t read the last sentence on the picture above, I’ve written it here.  “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord.  Goodbye and may God bless all."   

 Chris McCandless Journal from Alaska.