July 19,2010

July 19, 2010

Left Fairbanks early this morning in route to Denali National Park. Took about 2 hours to drive here. Beautiful scenery along the way, but once again rainy and cloudy. Paul was hoping to get a campground inside the park, but they were full. Since none of the ones inside the park have any kind of hook up, the girls and I were secretly happy to find one just outside with water and electric!! It is very cool. It over looks the Nenana River. We back up right over the top with a beautiful view, but it is very windy and chilly today.

We decided to do the Whitewater rafting today, but couldn’t get out until the 6p.m. ride. Oh well, since it never seems to get dark here we thought it would be ok. Decided to do the shopping, lots of souviner shops, Paul just loves those!!! At least we got that out of the way so we can just enjoy Denali for the next couple of days!

We were very excited to do the rafting! We were happy to hear they provided wetsuits and water shoes, they only told us to bring extra socks, so we figures our feet would maybe get damp. After about 1/2hour or so getting instructions on how to get into the wetsuits and instructions as to what to do if you get thrown out of the raft or if the raft were to tip over, we were on our way! By this time I was having second thoughts. especially when our raft guide told us that he was the one guide that had broke the record of the company’s safety streak by being the one who tipped over a raft not long ago! Anyway, I was brave and decided to press on. Mallory told me to just stop being a baby it was going to be fun! Little did we realize the water was 35 degrees and the temp outside was only 58 degrees! Needless to say when we got wet, which was within the first 5 minutes we were cold, and Mallory was the first to begin whining! Who was being the baby then? We were out on the river for a good 2 hours and it was amazing and fun! We hit one rapid so hard that is knocked our guide onto his butt and he was laying on the bottom of the raft! Aside from the cold, the trip was by far one of the best things we’ve done on this trip! Some how I was the one that got the most wet though.

By the time we arrived back at our campsite, it was after 10pm and of course it was raining again!