7/10/13: Denali National Park - Day 2

Well, we woke to rain today and thought that it would be a great day to do laundry since we have been on the road for a week now.  Wow, that was a loooong job!

My chair and I at the laundry mat:

After laundry was washed, dried, folded and put away we decided to head into the town of Healy.  Healy is about 11 miles up the highway from Denali National Park entrance.  It is a cool little town.  We saw that they had the bus from the movie "Into the Wild" at a local pub, where you can go in and check it out.  It was honestly amazing to see how they made this bus look just like the original.  "Into the Wild" is a book (made into a movie) about a young man that decides to leave everything behind, burns his money and hitch hikes up to Alaska.  He then walks in on Stampede road (also in Healy) where he finds this bus and lives in it and off the land.  Unfortunately, Chris never walks back out of the wild, as he dies in the bus..  Anyway, as we are in the movie bus checking it out a man and his family stop by.  He starts telling them all about the work done on the bus...  turns out that this man is one of the painters/builders of the very movie bus we are standing in!!!  Odd!!!  So, since Rick loves that movie so much, he took the opportunity to ask the nice man questions about it all.  It was very interesting and he was such a nice man!

After stopping in Healy, we went back towards the park entrance.  About 1.5 miles north of there is a great little shopping area that is full of gifts shops, food and ice cream.  Across the street from that is the Denali Grand Lodge.  We put on our jackets and walked from shop to shop for the next hour or so.  We found lots of great deals and had fun.  Now, time to head back to camp.  It was a fun day to keep busy in the rain...  Tomorrow, we will be heading out into the park on the first of three days on the bus!  

Here are some photos of our day:

It's a rainy one outside: