a vacation in denial, pt. 1

After five weeks and over 10,000 miles, we finally reached Arizona again. We got to Flagstaff on Sunday, went to Tucson on Monday, I spent the day there yesterday and today I drove back to Flagstaff by myself. So anyway, now I finally have a bit of time to chronical a bit more of our journies.
After our day in Vancouver, we set out north through Canada. We drove for two relatively miserable days, alternately full or road construction or overly-curvy roads or really hard rain, making only about 500 miles each night. The third day, though, was beautiful. We passed by Lake Kluane, which I swear is the most beautiful color of blue I have ever seen. The rain slowed, and we spent the night in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, which is actually large-ish and has a grocery store and everything! The next day, we drove through Watson Lake, which has an awesome signpost forest (http://www.explorenorth.com/articles/signpost.html) and I believe we made it all the way to Fairbanks. The next morning was chilly and grey as we set out for Denali, hoping for no good reason that we would be able to locate a way, preferably free, to find Erica out at Toklat, which is mile 53 on the park road.
Luckily, after some blundering around and ascertaining that Erica's "friend" Jeff would be driving a bus at 4, we ran directly into Erica at the entrance bookstore. I think we scared her a little, since we arrived fairly early (by a few days). We rode Jeff's bus out with her, and set up in the loft in her house.
The park is so beautiful. Even that day, with all it's rain and low clouds, it was really awesome. You can't drive, ususally, so everybody rides these big buses out to wherever and back on a windy dirt 1-and-1/2 lane road. We were really concerned about the cold, because we weren't really prepared for rain and cold. Silly us, not realizing that July is the rainy season! Anyway, the next day it began clearing up, and it was in fact beautiful and mostly-to-entirely clear for the rest of our trip.
Our second day there, we got on a bus at Toklat and rode out to "Fish Creek," which is really a branch of the Little Stony Creek but the park service thought people would get angry that they couldn't see Big Stony Creek or some such crap. Anyway, we rode out, and then got off the bus at a place called Stony Dome and hiked for a bit. Denali also has very few trails; mostly you just kind of walk around on your own and make a lot of noise so bears don't get startled by you. It was a really nice hike, tundra is so cool to walk in! It's like a big weird sponge that your feet sink into, sometimes up to the ankles, and then you kind of bloomp back out. We came back and walked until a bus picked us up. That night two more Tucson people, Patty and Pam, came into the park and we all rode in a park service van (with Erica driving!!!) to the end of the road, Wonder Lake. Beautiful, but very mosquito-y. We drank wine and picked wild blueberries and watched as Denali (the real name of Mt. McKinley) came almost out of the clouds. We started driving back at 11 in the almost-twilight that never entirely went away while we were there.
Whew! I'm tired of typing. I'll write more later. I still have the rest of Denali, the trip down, and Yellowstone.