Denali to Big Delta ~ New Friends on the Trail

 

Our Denali experience was super great. We met all of our intended goals. Our reservations were for another night but, we decided to leave the Park a day early. As I mentioned before, the canoe has no paddles and it wanted to move on with good memories behind. We had a short stay back on Fairbanks, attended church, met a fellow Lance camper owner in the parking lot, chatted and down the road we went.

A Santa Stop for Aspen

Our trip out of the Park also brought us good news that we wouldn’t have gotten until we came out, as there was no phone or internet service in the Park. Our good news… which was only about hour old, was a message from Helen’s sister, Doris, informing us of the arrival of her newest grand-daughter, baby…Lexi Evelyn DiFilippe (8 lbs. & 21” long, with a headful of black hair!). We’re looking forward to meeting this little beauty.

Big Delta, AK was our goal for this day. I wanted to check out this town for a simple reason. One of our neighbors back home was stationed here back in the Alcan Highway construction. Roland would be surprised to see the change in the highway.

Helen mailing Aspen a post card from the North Pole!

No trip would be complete without stopping at the North Pole and buying a few post cards for our grandkids with a North Pole post mark. Santa said to say, “Hi Aspen! The reindeer are putting on weight for their big trip at Christmas.”

The End or Begining of Alaska Highway!

Big Delta didn’t have a campground that we liked so we traveled 8 miles south to Delta Junction. A State Campground was conveniently located a short distance from the library.  There were only four or five campers there. The camp host told me that two guys in number 14 were shooters competing in a match at Ft Greely. It wasn’t long before I was over there talking about rifle teams and shooting (as a past member of the New Hampshire National Guard Rifle Team). He was using a BR6. Right off, I knew they were not competing with combat rifles. These were long range shooters 1000 yards with scopes. It happened to be very windy and their score card showed the results. It was a good chat at site fourteen.

After dinner, we walked over to our next door neighbors, Bill and Antje (pronounced Uncha) Schnaekel. We had a wonderful conversation over a campfire. They were from North Carolina. Ironically, this was the third couple we’ve met on this trip who had lived on a boat. They were going north and we were heading south. We exchanged tips and ideas.  The wind finally got the best of the fire and we exchanged emails and said good-bye.

That is what we did and saw