Chena Hot Springs Hike. . .

Hi everyone! I've been having a fantabulous time here in AK. On Saturday, I started my adventure at about 4:30 am. Left the station at 6:00 am (it's about an hour drive from Nenana to Fairbanks). I couldn't believe the sun was rising that early, and I also couldn't believe the fresh 6 inches of snow on the attractive red pickup truck. I managed to dig out a scraper and thankfully most of the highway going up to Fairbanks was clear. There are pretty good drops off the edge and moose like the road too. I arrive at Pippins house about 7:30 am. We got packed. Our plan was to leave about 7:30, but I don't think we got out until much later. We also planned on an 8 miles loop hike. yeah. We got about 2 miles in when the trail forked.

The Angels Rocks trail was very well packed down and the sky was clear and quite warm. I was down to a t-shirt.

Someone told me 5 weeks would be enough. "Enough, for what?," I asked. "For you to be hooked." Well I don't think it's going to take five weeks. We had a good map and knew where we needed to go, but the trail must have blown over with snow.

We decided to try to make it through this open ridge and see if we could find it on top by the rocks. The snow just kept getting deeper and deeper. I decided to put on snowpants at about waste deep. Then we tried crawling. That worked a lot better. I'm glad I was hiking with a mountain woman.

We made the wise choice and turned around at the top of the ridge when we determined that there was no trail.

After hiking back down, we had to hitch-hike back to our car. I figured if we put on our packs and looked kind of miserable, someone would take pity and it worked!! The hot springs felt pretty good after that! Smelled like sulfur. . Super cool to swim outside with snow on the ground in warm water!

Sat night we stopped at every place trying to find cheap pizza. No such luck. We settled for Pizza Hut and Alaska Troopers movie. Alaska Troopers is a super good reality show. You should check it out on Youtube.

That was just one day. . I have much more to say. . but should be responsible and get some sleep.