Day 19

We all woke up late. It was nice to have a kind of lazy day. We got up and began to get the trailer ready to leave. I whipped up some breakfast tacos. Grant had been saying all day he wanted to play mini golf. In Pioneer park they had a little golf course so we went to play. Grant used the clubs about twice and then ran around from hole to hole rolling the balls with his hands. He had a blast. Again I heard many people complaining about the smoldering 80 degree heat. We played until Grant got tires. We needed a couple things we forgot from Wal Mart so Grant and I went to the version of Krogers here. Krogers here is cool in that it sells guns and is larger than a regular Kroger. We came back and took a ride on the mini railroad again. Grant met a couple other little kids and they all wanted to sit in the back together. We got packed up after that and left. We had to go to a gas station to dump sewage and get gas. We stopped at the visitor center on the way out of town. There were some sled dog team there trying to raise money and they had a little pen of puppies. Grant and I played with them a bit. They were a kind of husky mutt. The visitor center is along the Chena river and we looked down to see a large salmon swimming upstream. We got back in and drove South along the Parks highway. It was absolutely gorgeous. This is the classic wilderness that Chris McCandles disappeared into in "Into the Wild". Miles of dense forests surrounded by mountains. It was a bit hazy and we realized it was all smoke from a huge forest fire burning nearby. It was massive and I have never seen anything like it. Luckily it was probably still a mile or so off the road. We are a day ahead of schedule so we stayed at an rv park near Denali as our reservations there are not until tomorrow. The owners were very nice on check in. The winds are very high which made setup annoying. Amy had a great idea. We could ask the owners if they new anywhere we could take the kids to pick wild berries. He said "As a matter of fact, yes". There ia an area past the RV park where there is a field full of wild blueberries. He told us to be careful of bears. We packed up the kids and bear spray and set out. The little blueberries were everywhere. We spent the evening picking the wild blueberries. We will probably make some pancakes and bread with them tomorrow.