Alaska Adventure

I blinked as we stepped out of the airport and into the cool Alaskan air. We could suddenly smell the scent of pine trees everywhere. It was one in the morning when our plane landed in Fairbanks but already the sun was up when it was dark only an hour before. All of us were tired after taking three different flights, and being in four airports all day, over thirteen hours of flying.

Our bags were heavy with packed clothing and gear. We walked slowly over the parking lot to meet our driver to the campsite ten minutes away. After stuffing the gear into the truck we piled into a fifteen passenger van. We arrived to the campsite and the pine scent grew stronger. We then had to unload the truck to get to our tents and gear we needed for only the next few hours of sleep.

It took Cindy and I about twenty minutes to set up the tent, we threw our sleeping bags and small travel pillows inside and then practically thew ourselves in. We were so tired we immediately feel asleep even though outside it looked like dusk when it really was two in the morning, really six to us.

Our advisor's Mrs. Smith and Mr. Chris woke us up around seven and said we had an hour to pack up, we had to drive several hours to Denali. As everyone slowly got up and active the sky turned from a medium grey to a light grey. It felt so odd that the weather was cool but the sun was out.

Before starting the long drive to Denali, we had to stop at the Scout center to meet our guides and stock up on food. Our tour guides seemed very nice, they were husband and wife. Eldon would be doing most of the driving while Dawn would point out sights and such.

Once more, after packing away the tents and gear we packed right back into the white van and started to drive. Mrs. Smith, our female advisor had brought a travel Scribble game so most of the kids towards the back played it, passing to the front when needed. On the flights over we even had some other passengers passing the mini tan board around to the players for us.

A couple of different times we pulled off the side of the road to look at the beautiful views. At one stop there was a giant rock where people had signed their names. I wanted to but we decided not to since it was against the Boy Scout rules. Another time we stopped half way there to eat some lunch.

Our lunches - now they were a story in themselves! We had only a couple of different choices: tuna on crackers or mini (very mini) sausages with crackers. Other then that we had the mini bags of cookies and some nasty "leather" fruit snacks. Believe me, after almost two weeks of these kind of things for food, you were very happy to eat airport food - no matter how much it was!

After hours of driving we pulled into a Chevron gas station. We looked around and asked why we were stopping. Dawn explained that we were at our first campsite.

Justin exclaimed, "What? This is a gas station, not a campsite." We soon found out the information we were given before the trip was actually wrong. In fact we were missing a box of food so we ended up having to cut down on our servings for lunches.

As we pulled the van and trailer down the semi steep mountain we saw that there were more RV's then tents. I knew some of us were mad while others were happy. If they did not like the food, they'd just pay for some junk up in the convenience store. Also we had a laundry mat and bathrooms/shows. Though you had to pay for a shower and to do your laundry, it felt nice for a few days. While staying at this campsite we would travel about thirty minutes to the nearest town, which was quite small. There we would load up with other people to go white water rafting 22 miles down river.

The ride to town was not that bad, it was the bus ride to the river. The bus was crowded, some had to sit three to a seat. The road was mostly gravel and quite bumpy so it seemed every ten seconds we were being jolted off of our seats and into the air until we landed hard on our butts. Finally after what seemed like forever we made it to the river sight.

Before we left o the bus, we had to gear up though. This meant putting on dry suits which came up over our cloths and kept them dry if you put them on correctly, if you didn't well then you were out of luck because the water temperature was thirty degrees. After pulling on the skin tight, annoying dry suit you had to put on these boots that went up to your mid calf. After a quick photo opp. we loaded onto the bus.

Once at the river, the guides went over the safety rules, if you feel over board what to do ect. Basically if you fell in try and swim to the raft and pull yourself in. If you were not able to get back to the raft you were to keep your feet in front of you and up, we were warned that there were rocks that could seriously hurt s if you ran into one. Slowly one by one the rafts were pushed into the raging water and soon the first group was off heading down river.

Since our Venture had twelve of us total we had two rafts to ourselves, plus a couple other people in one raft. The raft I happened to be in was last in the line of rafts. When we finally pushed off, we could not see the original group.

It was great to go white water rafting through Alaska because you got to see mountains and wildlife in their habitat. While rushing down river we saw doll sheep and several hawks. At one point during our travel we approached a calm section of the river. Our guide asked if anyone wanted to jump in for a quick swim, none of us wanted to. However, our other half of the group did - two members of the crew, Tommy and Justin went ahead and jumped into the freezing water! The dry suit may have kept their cloths dry but it did not keep our bodes warm at all.

After the four hour trip down the river we pulled over to the left side of the now calm water to get out. The bus was there, waiting to pick everyone up again. Shivering and with clattering teeth we pulled the raft ashore and up a small hill (which seem huge compared to man made "hills" in Florida). After we piled into the bus we headed back to town to change out of the dry suits and go back to camp.

At camp people were put in charge of cooking and cleaning up. I think Cindy, Devin and I were in charge of cooking and thanks to Mountain House we had this odd mac n' cheese kind of dinner with veggies in it. It was a bit spicy but hey it was better then nothing