Up at 6am... This week will kill me!
We had to take all our tents down this morning as we were staying at another place tonight which was on the way to Denali National Park.
On the way we stopped at a grocery store to buy food for the next few days which was good because we had a bit more say in what we ate then even if we chose fajitas and pasta again haha. After that, we ate our sandwiches and then set off for the campsite stopping at a salmon farming lake on the way, which at the time wasn't actually working so we didn't see anything but just took pictures. We also had another photo stop and i soon realised that although I may not get to see the snow you imagine in Alaska, I couldn't have come at a better time of year as it was the start of fall (autumn) and the colours here are insane!! At this one stop, you had green grass which then turned into this pale yellow colour, then some bushes would turn bright orange and finally a real deep red, the flowers were bright purple, the sky a clear bright blue and then a white glacier in the background... Alaska is beautiful!! We had a group picture infront of this, which meant I had a very fake smile after 13 cameras and then Brendan got most of us to do 'jump' photos and he was actually really good at capturing them. Ross decided to do a star jump for his picture and ripped his trousers right down the crotch, we couldn't stop laughing for ages and think everyone was pretty glad he had boxers on.
We reached the campsite shortly after which had a cabin at the top with a bar and restaurant in and most importantly had showers at the back, and it also had a little covered area for us to cook and eat and then you went down a hill which had a river at the bottom which we were camping next to. It also had some sled dogs opposite us which would bark every ten minutes and would then howl: if you howled they would also howl back which the boys liked to test out a lot haha.
We set up camp and then all formed a queue for the showers; definitely one of the best showers I've ever had and we all did laundry aswell. It had been a really clear day and the night sky was looking clear which Brendan advised us could be a perfect night to see the northern lights if we wanted to set alarms for 1am: of course we decided the best plan was to stay up drinking of course!
We ate pasta, washed up and then Jamie and Ross went wood collecting for a bonfire: I got camp chairs out the trailer and we all settled down in front of a bonfire under the bridge with alcohol. We soon all ended up with coats, hats and gloves on as it was so cold because there were no clouds in the sky and then the smoke from the fire would sting your eyes so I put my sunglasses on... Cool dude!
Jamie then got her bottle of vodka out and we all proceeded to do shots with us also pouring each other very large cups of vodka and orange, it wasn't long before we were feeling a bit drunk. Then we had marshmallows so ate melted marshmallows and made Oreo smores which were pretty damn good: at this point we were also pretty convinced we saw the beginning of some sort of northern light but a local guy told Mary it wasn't but I'm still sticking by that :-p as we were looking up for the northern lights we noticed how clear the sky was and how many stars were clear, it was at this point I saw my beloved northern star and Orion's belt... Welcome back stars :D
Myself and Jamie then went on the hunt for more alcohol, ended up sat on a hill talking and when we went back down everyone had packed up and was going to bed, apparently we'd disappeared for over an hour, whoops! We tried to make the fire keep going with a lot of lighter fluid which didn't do much and then decided to go sit on the top of the bridge... My memory is a little blurry but I know we listened to my iPod, burnt a map I had in my pocket to keep us warm which clearly lasted 5 seconds, then laid in the middle of the bridge looking for the lights... It got to 3am, got very cold and there were no lights so we both stumbled into our tents....