Work, hike, rinse, repeat as needed

This past week has been really busy, well it's felt really busy.  We got 3 days off and all I wanted to do was get into the park and hike/backpack.  Unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen.  I moved rooms on Friday and then worked all day so I didn't have time to get things organized to camp.  I also couldn't find anyone with the same days off that wanted to go and backpack.  Everyone that I talked was either leaving Saturday morning while I had to work or not off until Monday.  Saturday after work I met up with one of the bus drivers and another Holland America employee and we decided to go into the park to Savage River and hike around.  So far this is the farthest into the park I've been, which is 15 miles.  That may not sound like much but it takes an hour to get that far.  The park road is only paved out to that point and it continues for another 83 miles past that!  The speed limit is only 35mph and every bus stops for wildlife so needless to say it takes a while to get from point A to point B.  Saturday was a beautiful day in the park though, the clouds were big and puffy and the sun was shining.  We had planned on trying to hike up Mt. Margret but then decided to follow the river south instead. 

The hard part about Denali is that you look out at these valleys and think, "Wow that looks great a nice grassy flat valley." However what you're looking at is actually 5-6 foot tall brush with spongy Tundra below it.  When we got down to the river the nice "grass" was actually a stiff filed of bushes that more often then most was over our heads.  When you get into brush like that it's really important to remember that it is prime bear land so we walked around yelling "Hey bear!"  

We walked about maybe a mile and a half but it took use well over an hour because of how hard it is to bushwhack.  The views were gorgeous though and hopefully today I'll have the photos posted for everyone to enjoy.  

Yesterday I relaxed because my feet were killing me from standing at work the past few days.  I did laundry and cleaned up my new room.  Then Steph and Alex came back last night from the most intense sounding hike ever.  They had hiked out to the bus that Chris McCandless(Into the Wild)  lived and died in during the summer of 1992.  I'm hoping to get out there this summer before I leave but it's defiantly going to be a rough hike so I want to be prepared for that. Keep checking out the photos and I'll be posting more soon.