What with more phone calls, emails, packing the Tiger, shopping, and just enjoying the warm weather we had a late start from Fairbanks.

A few miles south of Fairbanks at a scenic overlook we met some people from Missouri driving buses with the word Princess on the side. They apparently worked for the Princess Cruise line, and they and many others would be driving Princess buses for the summer. The buses were stored for the winter in Fairbanks and they were taking them to their summer work location - for this group that was Denali. During the remainder of the day we saw maybe 20 Princess buses headed south along the George Park Highway.

We made a short stop in the town of Nenana and spent some time watching the ice in the Nenana River before moving on. Nenana runs an annual competition to guess the date and time that the River ice breaks up.

Just before the town of Healy we passed by the start of Stampede Road made famous by the book Into the wild - we did not attempt to go and look at the bus where the young man passed away.

Just south of Healy we came to the township on the highway that marks the entrance to Denali national Park and found everything except one gas station closed. Inside the park similarly almost everything was closed except for one loop on one of the camp grounds, so that's where we parked. During the course of the afternoon maybe 20 other vehicles also pulled in so that we had some company in a campground for a change.

After settling in to our spot we walked down one of the foot trails to the town on the highway to confirm that nothing would be open until mid May. The path took us across an imposing concrete foot bridge over the Nenana River. The ice here had broken and we spent some time watching the ice flows move down the river and then jamb up.