Back to civilization - May 28th, 2012

Woke up late this morning (long day yesterday)   Morning walk by the Chena River.  Decided the thick brown RV needed a wash to become white again.  Found a local coin-op car wash with an RV bay.   Spent $20 to mostly clean up our rig!

Then on a bike ride.   Fairbanks has a very nice bike trail network all over town.   We went from Pioneer Park east.  Ended up at Fort Wainwright where we got challenged by an MP at the base.  Visitor Center told us we could ride all the way onto the base.  This information was not correct.  We were nicely instructed to turn our bikes around, which we did.

Then my eye glasses fell off.  Lost a screw and the temple piece fell off.   We rode north then west.   Low and behold, we see a WalMart.  Their optical department is open, even on Memorial Day, and they fixed my glasses for free.  We are having much better luck this week than last.

Ate lunch at Sam's Klondike.   Pretty good food, we'd eat there again.  (but we kept thinking "Yosemite Sam")

Then south to Denali National Park.  Short driving day.

They would not let us camp where we wanted to.  "Sorry, we can't give you that campground"   Next day we find out that in that campground, a grizzly had taken down a moose calf and momma moose was making havoc in the campground.

We camped in a campground 15 miles into the park.   Good that we did.   About 2 miles before the campground we come over a hill and there was the great one, Denali.  20,000+ feet.   No clouds around.   We find out that only 30% of visitors  to Denali get to see the mountain.   Lucky again!