Another Tale from 1957…
Return to Fairbanks to start another adventure -- a train ride on the Alaska Railroad. Mom and Dad wanted to see Mount McKinley and there were two ways to get to the National Park, by road or by train. A new road was supposed to be opening in the next few days and it was described as primitive. The paved main roads in Alaska have spoiled us to the point Dad opted for the train. The Alaska Railroad doesn’t connect with any other railroad so all the cars and engines were color coordinated and the passenger cars were wonderful. The only comparison I had was the Long Island Railroad, a commuter line, a far cry from the clean and shiny cars and engines of the ARR.
Mount McKinley National Park (since renamed Denali National Park) has its own internal roads and they are pretty decent. Dad wants to ship the car from Fairbanks to the park so we can drive ourselves around. I don’t know how much it cost in 1957 but it costs roughly $210 each way today so it might have been $24 in 1957 based on an inflation calculator. Like most things in Alaska I’m guessing it was more expensive. It also was not a popular option – our car is the only one making the trip.
Once we had our car back, we drove to the McKinley Park Hotel to ask about conditions at the park. The receptionist tells us the mountain has been invisible for the past 3 weeks with no sign of the rain stopping anytime soon. This is odd because the weather has been beautiful for the whole scenic train ride and even at the hotel the skies are clear. Out in front of the hotel we see one of the tour buses that normally takes people arriving by train around the park. This hotel burned down in 1972.
While Dad was at the reception desk, Mom struck up a conversation with an elderly woman in the lobby. The woman had been waiting for the weather to clear and when she spoke, her obvious New York accent made my mother ask where she was from. The woman lived in Rye, New York and for some reason volunteered that her family had lived nearby since before the 1776 Revolution. Dad’s family also goes back that far so my mother mentioned the Coutant family cemetery in New Rochelle, NY. The woman’s family is also buried in the Coutant Cemetery. We have traveled 5,000 miles to meet a distant relative.
I share the park entrance sign because it no longer has this name.
We are campers so we’re not going to stay at a hotel. We’re going to drive 95 miles to the end of the park road and stay at Camp Denali. We have one small problem. Between the flight to Fort Yukon and arranging for the train trip, Dad forgot to fill the car with gas so we only have half a tank.
No problem, just fill up at the gas station in the park. Oops, there is no gas station and the only fuel available is diesel for the tour busses. Our half tank of gas should be good for 150 miles. Unfortunately we’re going to be driving 200 miles. If we’re real lucky, we might make it but if we’re not, running out of gas turns the Olds into a metal can full of Grizzly treats sitting on the side of a rarely traveled road.
The hotel arranged for their air taxi service that delivers mail and the occasional tourist to the park to bring a 5-gallon Gerry can full of high-test gas on its next flight. We are used to paying $0.50 a gallon in Alaska but this can is $5.00 or a dollar a gallon. That’s five times the price of gas in the lower 48 (that would be $75 to $100 today). Thank goodness the air service didn’t want to gouge a potential hotel client.
Once we had enough gas, we started the drive to Camp Denali, which is on private land right next to the park. Twenty miles from the hotel it is drizzling and overcast. We notice blueberry bushes are growing on both sides of the road, stretching as far as the eye can see so we pull over to check it out. The first bush fills a cup just by shaking one branch and within a half hour we have a 2-gallon bucket full of the biggest sweetest blueberries I had ever seen. Fortunately it was early in the season and the local bears were probably not ready to eat slow tourists. Our only worry is storing the bucket of berries at night.
Today Camp Denali is a pretty fancy place to stay but back in 1957 it was in its 3rd year of operation and not real fancy. Our little cabin on wooden pilings was a bit strange. The lower portions of the walls were wood but the upper portion was canvas, except for one wall. That wall had a door in the middle and large glass panes instead of canvas. Looking out into the rain it didn’t make sense.
Not wanting to throw out our blueberry bonanza and not wanting to attract those bears, dinner was blueberry soup. I think Mom was having second thoughts about eating raw berries from a bear's patch so boiling up a huge batch seemed reasonable. Blueberry pancakes were on the menu for the next morning but it turned into more of a blueberry pudding lunch thing.
Dawn comes early in the Alaska summer. The glass windows are filled with blinding white light reflected from the mountain. The small pond below the cabin is also reflecting the light into our cabin so there’s no way to sleep. I don’t think we took pictures from inside the cabin but this one is taken from the edge of the pond. Dad is showing off his timer and tripod.
We are reminded this is wilderness inhabited by large and dangerous creatures by the food storage unit at Camp Denali ("are you nuts carrying a bucket of blueberries around?". I don’t know how effective it is, considering how well bears climb trees. Maybe the rungs of the ladder are too weak to carry the typical bear’s weight (is that you Boo Boo?).
Great adventure!
