Denali Highway

After hearing about a musher driving his dog team with his F250 truck on the Denali Highway we decided to drive down and check it out.  

Dec. 8th, 10am

Unbelievable...gravel showing through on the Denali Highway.  Cantwell, the small town on the western side of the highway, hardly had any snow.  Alaska has had very little snow fall this winter.  But it's snowing now (Dec.13th)!  We've gotten several inches in the past couple of days and they are calling for several more by tomorrow!

With the extreme low angle of the sun right now the sky seems to hold the twilight colors during the few daylight hours we have right now.

 A little bit of overflow water and ice on the road.

 Four caribou walking on the frozen Nenana River.

 About twenty miles down the highway we came up upon this...a trooper (in the closest truck) came to winch out the truck on the far side of the overflow water in the middle of the road.  The trooper told us the water was about 4ft. deep!  Glad that wasn't us!

What a gorgeous day to be in the Alaska Range!

The Nenana River

 Crazy dog!  We keep testing him to see if he has a limit.  Here it's about -15 and we're traveling about 25-30mph.

Big patch of overflow in the road!  It's all ice here, but it was still a little unnerving driving over bare ice on enough of a slant that could send us sliding off the road.

 Interesting ice formations

  

 We saw this from the road and had to go check it out.

Glad we went last weekend because after the snow we are getting right now, I doubt vehicles will be able to drive on the Denali Highway!  Actually, we were super surprised we were able to then!  A very nice surprise indeed! :)