Mike 10. August 2008
Three weeks have passed. I used the last two days to check out Anchorage, to write some postcards, and get my gear packed for the trip back to Europe. Right now I am sitting here at the airport and wait for my Condor flight DE 6067 back to Frankfurt and then to Vienna, thinking about my time here.
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Mike 6. August 2008
Denali – a name full of promises, wilderness, fierceness. At the same time northern Americas highest peak and one of the US’ largest Wilderness and National Park Areas. A landscape where human beings are nothing more than small dots in a dramatically beautiful and at the same time potentially dangerous environment. An area, where you are up to yourself and the means you are carrying with you. Denali – land of the bears and wolves, of caribou and moose, of green valleys and everlasting winter .
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Mike 29. Juli 2008
After a couple of days without internet access finally: 11 Mbit/s WiFi! Time for an update. The recent days were mainly characterised by Canadian and Alaska gold rush times. Sounding names like Yukon, Klondike, Dawson City, Whitehorse, Skagway, White Pass, Yukon Navigation Company and so forth played a major role in these days. Only a few hours had a different focus: hot springs (but unlike our thermal water pools – read on why) and cold Beringia (how the American continent was first populated)
Read on for the details
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Mike 24. Juli 2008
The first day that greets me with sun shine already in the morning. The day must be a good one with such a start 
I am heading for the showers (unmetered!) in the middle of the pine trees. Good start, and then reality strikes: hot water becomes warm becomes hand warm becomes cold. Huaaa! And what about this rather refreshing stream of cold air coming down from the ventilation above the shower? Hm, I can’t help developing the suspicion that metering the showers isn’t necessary here: Small boiler + cold air stream = short showers? Must be some kind of camp ground algebra. Breakfast again makes up for this – first time outside, enjoying the warm sun rays on my back.
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Mike 23. Juli 2008
I am sitting at the camp fire, watching the flames eating slowly up the wood. Recent rainfalls made it all wet, so the fire is rather hesitating. Doesn’t matter, the camp ground is in the midst of a spruce forest and the meat is still frozen, so let’s take it easy.
What a day it has been, since we arrived here!
This morning we left Sourdough Recreational Camp Ground at rather rainy conditions. Nothing to see in the further distance, if there were mountains surrounding us they were covered in clouds and fog.
Our plan was to reach at least Tok and thus make quite some miles. The morning didn’t bring to many surprises and so at the end we decided to have coffee at the next “town” called Paxson, supposed to be at the crossroads of Richardson and Denali highways. Hm, town. What we discovered was a large wooden kind of lodge – no, not a timber lodge, it looked more like being completely made up of plywood. A bus just pulled in before us and deployed its load of passengers for the usual break stuff: pee, coffee and snacks. Folks, now I know where clichés come from! It was perfect – picture the scene: rainy weather, two dozen bus passengers streaming into the “café”, the inside completely covered in plywood, table tops made of “resopal”. Long queues in front of the loo’s, the gent’s lavatory even being without a lock. Behind the bar: a hydrogen-blond elder lady, marketing whatever they had there at the lodge/café/grocery store. The patron, also elderly and well Budweiser-fed, taking care of coffee orders. And in the kitchen, the compulsory black cook/waiter. Not long and one of the locals came in: jeans, checkered cotton shirt, body warmer, baseball cap and taking along his insulated coffee mug. Wow, I always believed such scenes to be exaggerated – folks, they are not! It’s just a real life description! What a start into this day