Alaska Day 5

Miles: 2,715.7
Average MPG: 19.3
Gallons: 140.71
Bears and Wolves: 5
Alaska Beards: 5
Miles Hiked: 6.4


On Sunday we awoke with a plan, we wanted to see the sled dog kennels and the Visitor Center.  We had oatmeal and struck out with some snacks and water bottles.  We walked the 1.1 miles to the Visitor Center. Along the way we had some fun:

I even got to share my affection for rose hips with everyone.  The Visitor center was amazing complete with $100,000 in solar panels that will pay for themselves in about 95 years. What's a national park without massive government waste? Sorry for my economic analysis, Nick (who is intimately aware of solar technology) and I just had to laugh at the idiocy of the expenditure.

This last photo is of my friend Alicia posted at the entrance to the Visitor center and her old bass Joleen. Inside, Josue and Mirella enjoyed a movie about predators in the park.  Later, we gathered in the cafe to eat a light meal before heading out to the dog kennels.  We took a longer trail out just to stretch out legs and some kind stranger took this picture:

We enjoyed the first of Denali's famed blueberries. They were awesome, but not a good as the ones out in the wild, I'll tell you about them later.  Oh and I loved this picture:

Yulia is doing her Russian Spy thing, Mirella is doing the hood thing, and Tina doing the Uma Thurmon from Kill Bill thing.

We made it out to the kennels later and I got to meet Alicia's old friend Chulitna. She is seven years old, which means in another year she gets to retire from her faithful sled dog service. In the winters, only sled dogs are used for park ranger patrols.  They work hard and pull together as a team as show in this video:

She was the oldest dog on the team.  It was funny she was biting a 9 month old new dog team member like a drill instructor who beats on a new recruit to make him into a good soldier.  The Alaskan Sled Dog breed is actually a mutt breed with very little genetic homogeneity.  Each dog there had their own look, some were long and lanky, while others had more square frames.  The only commonalities were in their large paw size, their long side fur, and in their high energy.

It was so much fun to enjoy the demonstration and just spend a few moments with Chulitna.  I whispered in her ear, "Alicia sends her love from Seattle."

After the dogs, we walked back to the Visitor Center area and back to our campsite. I had a totally mental idea to bread our chicken and deep fry it.  Mirella worked her magic and made my idea a reality.  We first cooked up a lot of bacon and kept the grease. They using crushed Cheddar Ruffles, Bisquick, eggs, and spices Tina breaded the chicken.  Nick then deep friend each piece in the lack of molten bacon fat.  It was truly amazing. The chicken was done to perfection and with a little corn it made the best meal of the whole trip.  We were all a little goofy and our little six person family laughed and laughed. Then we made Bacon marsh mellows  Nick's WiFi router is called "baconmarshmellows" so he wanted to make them. And it took little persuasions for me to jump on board.  After all, we had a whole bunch of recently cooked warm bacon and whole bag of jumbo camp fire marsh mellows.  So I broke out the bamboo sticks and we wrapped bacon around our marsh mellows.  We made s'mores with bacon and chocolate.  It was like a sweetly bacon-aded trip to a land of honey gram cracker men who laugh and dance all day and sing all night about how amazing glorious bacon is while doing back flips and sipping bacon grease cocktails!!

Totally 'Mazing.

I know here we are cooking hot dogs but imagine they were bacon marsh mellows.

As a was looking forward to a blessed night of dead sleep, Tina came back from the bathroom. We were the last folks awake. She shared her struggles with faith. So for the second time in as many days I shared the story of my shameful past of sin and idiocy.  I shared details when she protested that I really was a good guy. I laid it all out for her to see.  Again I felt naked and heard the echoes of shame haunting my mind.  She was silent as I shared. I concluded with my meeting Jesus and how hard that was and all the sweet pain afterwards as he dropped bomb after bomb on my idols and my foul religion. She shared her story and again I got pissed my fists clenched and un-clenched (I hate it when women experience suffering), and I cried for her.  I told her that my heart broke for her. I asked for her permission and then prayed against the enemy, his servants their lies, their works, and their effects. I prayed for her family. We must have spoke from 11:45PM until 3:30PM. I was happy to trade away another night's sleep for the privilege to talk about the Good News.

Many thanks to Fugazi and Ratatat for their Musical contribution to this blog post...but Fugazi your economic theory is freakin' dumb. k thx by