heading out again, this time for real, saying goodbye to fairbanks. it was hard saying goodbye, not because of the town itself, but because of all the wonderful things that it represents.
ross, nanna, and i hitch hiking from fairbanks to denali. ross eventually took off his bandanna and we got picked up. we bet on what kind of car would pick us up and i lost so i had to wear the humiliating bear bell for the rest of the trip.
we never waited for very long in between rides. people in alaska pick up hitch hikers. spread the word and try it out! however, we did do a little bit of walking. in these surroundings it was hard to be too bummed about it though.
mountains and wild life. two things we were about to see a lot more of in the park.
the hike we originally had planned on doing turned out to be impossible. or rather, turned out to remind us too much of granite tors. so we sat down with our hiking guides and made new amazing plans! we are unstoppable!
we agreed to do some backtracking and enter the actual national park. this little red square of a car picked us up. "miss piggy" it was called. it's owner and her dog seemed to be curtain that we could fit, even though we all had our doubts. however, after a little pushing and squeezing, we all made it inside the lovely automobile, which turned out to be about to fall apart. it was almost impossible for the lovely woman to shift gears cause i was practically sitting on the gear shift, and up hills we all had to lean forward and think light thoughts. we made it though. in one piece.
the park was stunning.we took the bus a couple of miles in and started our hike into the back-country.
we followed a river into the mountains. the weather was perfect and our optimism impossible to break.
well, maybe not impossible... after a while the underbrush thickened and grew bigger, and before too long we were walking slowly and clumsily through elders taller and thicker than i have ever seen before. the thing about not being able to see three feet ahead of you is that you might surprise a bear. which you don't want to do. so for three hours we were yelling "hey bear!" at the top of our voices. we tried to make variations, cause as you can imagine, "hey bear" gets kinda old after a while. i even made up a little song asking the bear not to eat us. nanna was not amused. 
when we finally made it out of the alders this beautiful view met us and we quickly forgot about distress and fear of bears. we might have lost our voices but we quickly regained our enthusiasm!
we found a perfect little flat spot to set up camp. just big enough for nanna's and my one-man tent and ross' bivysack.
meanwhile the sun was setting, giving everything an orange shine, even ross' green jacket (i'm kidding, it was orange to begin with).
we found a place to cook and enjoyed a grand meal and the beautiful view. we followed the recommendations of the park and made a triangle of our camp, cooking place, and storage spot. due to the importance of keeping wildlife wild (and people safe) the park asks that you make sure that the animals don't connect smells or leftovers of food with humans. so you have to cook 100 yards away from your tent and place you bear containers 100 yards further away. ross found it silly, nanna insisted, and i didn't really care. we ended up doing it and we all slept well that night.
nanna and i tucked in our sleeping bags in the little one-man tent. later on this trip all three of us actually spend a night in it. nanna was squished somewhere down in the bottom. before we fell asleep she gasped and said: if i scream during the night, it's because i can't breath and i need to get out. we promissed to let her out if that was ever the case. fortunately it never came to that.
the next morning we woke up to another beautiful day. we went up on the ridge to eat breakfast, but never made it that far, cause out in the distance we spotted a brown creature. bear? moose? caribou? it was big and moving gracefully. we observed it for a while and once it made it's way down to the river we were sure that it was a moose. we were pretty relieved that it wasn't a bear. we sat down to cook but suddenly saw another brown creature coming down the same way as the moose. this one moved differently though, faster and more determined. it noticed us and seemed to not know what to do. it walked directly towards us for a little while but turned around and walked the other way. even though we were pretty sure that it was just another moose, nanna decided that the wildlife was a little too wild for her, and after a group meeting we decided to turn around and walk out again the same way we had come in (minus the elders).
the way out went a lot faster than the way in, and ross and i decided to try and hitch hike a little further into the park on the dirt road. a nice couple let us sit in the back of their pickup truck. nanna took the bus back out, still with the almost-bear encounter on her mind. as she sat down in the bus and it started moving a big old grizzly crossed the road right in front of the bus. nanna sat there, safe inside the bus, and experienced the closest real-bear encounter you can get without being too close for comfort. coincident? i think not.
we met back at a camp ground near by, where we spend the last night. although ross and i were a little bummed about not being inside the park anymore, we were still so happy and excited that we just had to jump!the next day ross left back to fairbanks and it was just nanna and i. i was sad. but nanna made me feel better. she is so good at that.
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