Updates for July 29th, 30th, 31st, and August 1st.

We haven’t been doing much these last few days so I’ll lump them together. We left Mt McKinley Park in the morning, drizzly and cloudy. Drove to the North Denali overlook and parked for a few hours just relaxing, reading and waiting for the clouds to lift for one more view of the mountain. No luck so drove on to Byers Lake (still on the Parks Highway, not much choice in roads up here!) and camped for the night. There looked like a nice easy trail around the lake so we headed out. About a ½ mile along the trail it started up the hill and inland. Lots of tree roots, steps, etc so not easy walking. We got as far as a swinging bridge when I decided this was all the further I’m going. Dale went across the bridge and looked things over and came back and said we would go back the way we came. Got back to camp and walked a bit around the campground.

The next morning we had planned to walk the lake trail going the other direction, but it was rainy so headed for the South Denali Viewpoint. Dale was hoping it would clear off to see the mountain and that a moose would show up in the river valley we overlooked. No luck, it was drizzly and cloudy and no moose showed up. But there we had a signal for cell and had messages. Richard was going to be at Tim’s for the next couple of evenings so in the PM we headed back to Palmer. Had a nice visit with Richard and an excellent supper from Barbara.

Tuesday we walked with Barbara then went with Tim to relocate a squirrel. It was a sunny, beautiful day for Barbara’s garden club visitors.

After that we went for drive up to Lazy Mountain where we got some great pictures.

Wednesday, Aug 1st, we woke up and were going to leave, but found out there were going to be high winds and rain on our road so elected to stay another day. Later that afternoon we went to a Transportation museum. Most of the machines there had been used in one way or the other for the development of Alaska, especially mining and farming. Lots of old machines, but many were just the remains and those that were restored were sitting outside in the weather and deteriorating.