Denali National Park Day 3 by Kenny & Kristen

We woke up from our back country with a renewed vigor. We packed up our camp and went to grab out food. It seems like we either picked a good spot or no animals were interested in of food. So we made some quick breakfast (freeze dried bag of powdered milk and granola) which actually wasn’t to bad, and set off. We knew that we shouldn’t have to much to do today because we were planning on catching an early bus out of the park so we could get a start on our drive to anchorage. So we started heading up stony dome which we a surprising climb because every time we made it to a peak we were greeted with a new peak. After about an hour or two we made it to the top with relative ease. Our legs were pretty dead from the previous hike to Healy as well as our previous day of backcountry. So after taking some pictures and building a cairn, we descended down and headed towards the road. Off in the distance we could see some caribou grazing in the plains. We had a set of binoculars but they were not the most magnifying so it wasn’t much easier to see using them. But we kept trekking until we hit the road. We did end up missing the first bus out, but we were lucky enough to catch the second which got us out of the park about three hours later at 2pm.  After dropping off the bear canister back at the wilderness access center, we headed back south toward anchorage and stopped at the campground we were in the night before our back country start to grab a couple showers and re-organize. Conveniently there was also a Thai food truck there so we ate a great lunch of thai food which was awesome and then head back to the road to finish the trip. The drive to anchorage was a long one – about 4 hours. There was not much along the road for site other than the Alaskan Range of mountains, but on this day we had a very overcast sky so seeing much of anything in the distance was pretty tough. We did however have some neat roadside spots to see. Mostly Older abandoned hotels or restaurants that someone had tried to start up but left long ago. Like this one – the IGLOO.  Once we made it to anchorage we stopped at our hostel to check in and do a little planning. We found a place to eat and double checked what we had on our agenda for the next day. Once we were comfy, we headed out to grab dinner down by the water.  After dinner we headed back to get some shut eye. Unfortunately, our hostel luck stayed on the same course with some sort of ruckus that occurred at 3am. I think Kristen got some sleep but it was loud enough into the wee hour of the morning I felt like I heard the whole ordeal. 

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