Denali
Thursday-Friday 13-14 November, 2025
The Great One.
Predictions were for much less aurora activity following the storm. We decided that we had had incredible luck and a truly outstanding experience. But it appeared that it was over, and that, after the treat we had had the previous two nights, it wasn't worth going out to see much fewer aurora the following nights. So we worked a full day Thursday and went to sleep at a decent hour.
Since we had had such incredible luck with the aurora, we decided to try to see another elusive feature of the Alaskan interior: Denali, the largest mountain in North America. Clearer skies were predicted for Friday than for Saturday, so we took most of Friday off and headed southwest for Denali.
See the temperature (in Fahrenheit) on Bofuri's dashboard. Photo by Eric.
Early on, we were lucky enough to catch the beautiful if distant view of the mountain pictured above.
Of course we stopped to try to find a cache. Bofuri handled the snow on this road as if it weren't even there. Photo by Eric while I was driving.
I couldn't believe that Eric was able to find this tiny cache in this place. He also had had to solve a puzzle to get the coordinates! Photo by Eric.
Eric took this picture of me in the beautiful scenery around us.
We only entered Denali National Park along the highway, but we stopped to take a picture of the sign. We had visited before in 2011, although we had failed to see the mountain then.
You can't see the mountain from anywhere near the park entrance, and the road heading into the park was mostly closed due to a landslide. So we continued some distance further along the highway to where we could see the mountain again.
Denali with a telephoto. We could have continued further along the road for closer views, but at that point, we still had a chance of not exceeding the 100 mile per day limit on Bofuri. It appeared that more clouds were coming in, so we decided to turn back at this point.
Eric had to take a selfie of us, because my fingers were too cold to operate the phone camera.
The scenery around us was beautiful.
Eric photographed Bofuri along this beautiful highway.
The Nenana River, as I photographed it from Bofuri's windows as Eric drove back to Fairbanks.
The road was beautiful. While the snowstorm that had been occurring on our arrival had left us with snowy roads for most of the trip, the roads were at last mostly dry.
We stopped for a couple of other geocaches along the way back, one that had been placed by the Denali Duo we had met on Sunday, and this one at a scenic viewpoint.
Eric photographed a railroad trestle visible from the cache site. As you can see, the sun was going down at the time of our visit to this site, but we saw a group of people in helmets heading out on a canyoneering adventure.
A beautiful Belt of Venus appeared behind the mountains.
This had been a long driving day, but we were extremely satisfied by our success! The trip had been phenomenal.
Map of our drive out to Denali.
On to the Museum of the North.