I've been sharing a tent with Jennifer all week and she's been our little alarm setter for each morning. So, last night she didn't switch her alarm back on, it could have been confusion because today we weren't leaving camp until 830 so didn't have to be up super early. I woke up a little confused, looked at my iPod and it was 815 so we quickly got dressed and brushed our teeth; I apologised to Brendan and he acted like he's never slept in, in his life, hate people like that, why he didn't think to kick our tent I have no idea!!
Anyway, we weren't the only ones late but I'd missed my chance to make a sandwich so threw some crackers, ham and almonds in a bag... Interesting!!
We headed back to the visitors centre and today was a free day to go do any hikes round the national park that we might want to do; Brendan told us about one where you got a bus to a lake and walked round the lake looking for moose or another one where it was a slightly harder hike and you climbed a 'mount' notice the word mount, up to about 500ft elevation so not that far at all.
Louise, Laura, Jamie, Isobel and myself decided to do that one as we didn't want to be stuck on a bus again, so off we set on quite a straight forward hike. It wasn't long until the back of my thighs started pulling and I realised we were slowly walking up a steeper track, the further along we walked the more we all peeled off our layers of coats and jumpers. My asthma then decided to kick in; I thought at one point that I'd grown out of asthma but I think I'd actually just stopped doing any form of exercise hahahaha! Luckily, I had my inhaler so had a few puffs and kept going, we got to a lookout that felt like we must have been at 500ft but there was still loads of track to go so we carried on.
At this point, with every few steps my chest was getting tighter and tighter and when that happens I panic which obviously makes me hyperventilate so I told them to go on and I would just take my time behind them.
Every now and then, they would have stopped ahead and I'd catch up with them. It felt like we were walking for ages and none of us could understand how Brendan could refer to this as an average hike with not much elevation. At one point I ended up on my hands and knees scrambling up rock faces (turned out I went a different way to the other guys, haha) and eventually I joined the rest of them at the top, where I was so warm I just took my top off and stood in my bra although that didn't last long when the cold wind got me.
We ate our lunch, well I ate crackers, and we decided to check the national park guide for the details of this hike...
Turns out we climbed a mountain, with a 1700ft elevation and has a strenuous difficulty.... Bloody brilliant!
Anyway, now came the easy bit of going downhill, or I thought it would be easy, turns out I got a huge blister on the bottom of my foot and my knees were killing from the strain! Still I did feel proud after even if I was pathetically bad!

We took a slow walk back to the visitors centre, filled up on water and sugar and then watched a video documentary about the changes in Denali national park throughout the seasons which was quite good and we all got to just chill. Afterwards, we decided to do a small hike around the centre, Laura and Jamie went off to see some big lake and myself, Isobel and Louise went to a small river then did another small loop hike which had an awesome meadow view and led me to asking "so if it's a loop track, where does it end" blonde moment indeed!!

This is the point in which I need to make a confession to anyone that doesn't know that there is a brewery just outside of Healy which is a town near the national park and they have the official "Into the Wild" bus which was used in the movie. I did as much research as I could into making my way out to the real bus thats still in the wild and I just don't have the experience, time or equipment to go out into the wild and risk my life to see that bus so I stumbled across this brewery which has the replica there and asked Brendan if we could go for food one night!
So, after we'd all finished our hikes we set off towards Healy to eat and see the bus. Louise is also a big fan and so me and her were super excited, I felt so overly excited that I felt sick and probably could have cried which seems silly when it's not the real bus. However, this is an exact replica and Emile Hirsch and Sean Penn have both been in the bus and its pretty damn close to being the real thing; in fact the reason the brewery bought this bus was so that people would stop dying trying to get to the real bus and of course it doesn't hurt their profits.
We got to the bus and it's just surreal to see it in person, they have a deck chair so you can pose for the famous picture of Chris/Alex and the inside has the bed and stove in it just like he found, they also have loads of unseen pictures and diary entries hung around the bus which we all spent ages reading.
Then it was time to eat... I got ribs of course, they came and oh no you don't get half a rack it's a full rack, it was served on a chopping board and I wasn't even that hungry. Jamie had ordered a steak and I've never seen anything so big in my life, it was on a bone and everything, American portions are still evident! I only managed to eat half my ribs and felt immediately like I might burst, although I can't fault them on how good the ribs were.

We went back to the campsite, most people showered, some passed out and I sulked because I knew tomorrow was my last day with everyone and I was getting fed up of saying bye to people I got on with so I went to bed.