McKinley and Anchorage - Parkers

Today Marcia and I are caravan parkers.  We leave our Denali campground at 6:15 AM, trailer in tow, and follow our leaders JJ and Sandy and three other rigs 200+ miles to Anchorage to prepare things for the others.

As compensation for the early start, we hope to see more wild animals but no luck.  Our other hope is that we will be in the 1-in-3 visitors that actually glimpse Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America—and we do, magnificently, and full-frontal.   It is beautiful, and more impressive in person than in these photos.

Jack & Mary from Ontario lead the way.

We stop for breakfast and press on, passing through Wasilla of Sarah Palin fame, arriving at the Golden Nugget RV Park in Anchorage.  By probably 1:30 PM we are all settled and JJ and Gary explain how we are going to handle the parking – I’m to be out on the main street with a CB flagging down arriving Airstreams and directing them in to the park, Marcia will make sure they actually come in the correct park entrance, do her welcome dance, and point them to the next station; Sharon and Karen will check them off and meter the flow to Will, Jack, and Gary who will get them to their assigned sites. 

People have been warned not to arrive before 3PM and here we are ready by 2PM and no customers.  Finally someone emerges timidly from the Costco parking lot and rather than chewing him out for coming in early we bring him on in.  Others arrive sporadically, our NorCal gang arriving the latest, about 4 PM, and we are done.  Good job, Gary says.  Gary is very good and also nice, so we suspect he says this to all his parkers, but it still sounds nice.

For a good part of my parker time Sandy and JJ are with me, which works out well because in this large caravan they don’t really know me, and I don’t really know them.  We get along comfortably, and we have a good exchange of thoughts about caravaning.  I get a number of things of my chest and they seem very receptive.    

The campground BBQs hamburgers as a welcoming dinner, after which local Rod Perry entertains us with stories of the first Iditarod dog sled race, and shows us the sleds he used in the first and second race.  It seems surprising that anyone survived, but the Iditarod became famous and today is heavily sponsored and heavily covered by the media – nothing like the old days, and in no way as dangerous anymore for man, woman or dog (think GPS, money, helicopters, mandatory rests, vets, etc.).

There are more sled races than just the Iditarod in Alaska, and everywhere there are towns bragging of their role in particular races, and people hawking first-person books.