Northern Exposure: Heading to Denali
It was only the second day, but we were starting to get a little discouraged. We hadn’t seen the Northern Lights or any Alaskan wildlife, and as mentioned before, the locals say, “You don’t come to Fairbanks for the food.” We headed 100 miles out to Denali National Park, which is six million acres of pristine wilderness and (supposedly) abundant wildlife. Mt. McKinley, at 20,320 feet, dominates the park when visible.
Here are photos of the drive and our subsequent hike through whatever we could access. As it turned out, most of the park is closed during winter, and the main road wasn’t going to open until the next day (but no one knew that until three hours before we arrived). Bust!
Northern Exposure: The road to Denali
But wait, there’s more. I went to bed early because I needed to be up at 4 a.m. to get to Northern Alaska Tours before 6 so we could tour the Arctic Circle. There was another couple in the B&B with me, and the husband knew I wanted to see the lights. At about 1:30 a.m., he noticed the sky changing color, so he came running down to my room yelling, “MELISSA MELISSA MELISSA THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ARE OUT!”
I jumped out of bed, wearing only my pajamas, and ran out to the front yard (which faces north) in minus 9 degree weather. Sure enough, there was a mist moving in the sky. I don’t have the best camera for the lights, so I only got two decent photos out of it, and even those are blurry:
Note the dust on my lens! I am such an amateur. Another interesting thing was, the mist looked white to my naked eyes, but the photos all turned out green. Later, when I talked to people who had been camping at the Arctic Circle, they said they could see the green with their naked eyes, as well as pink.
The lights didn’t dance, but they definitely shifted during the time we watched. We didn’t hear any noise, either, but that didn’t matter. We were just happy to see it. Everything else on the trip from here would just be gravy.
Bucket list: Check.
To see all of the raw, unedited photos of our second day, click here.
