In April of 2010, our daughter, Jenni was living in Fairbanks, Alaska. Joanne and I (Jan) flew to Fairbanks to visit her. Now, as we know, Alaska is a Huge state. In the interior of Alaska there is a huge national park called “Denali National Park”.


During the summer months visitors can only drive about 13 miles into the park.
The park people have a “lottery” system where, for (I think) $10.00 you could, IF you won the lottery, you could drive all the way to the end of the park road about get this 90 miles. Unbeknownst to me, Joanne bought a lottery ticket.
And, would you believe it, Joanne won the lottery!
So, In September of 2010 Joanne and I and two of our sons flew to Fairbanks, to drive 90 miles to the end of the road.

Only those who had a lottery permit were allowed to drive the 90 miles to the end of the Denali road.

At this point, I’m going to just let you admire the scenic photos that you see below.





The park people told us that sometimes they have had to cancel the road lottery trip due to heavy snowfall. But as you can see from the photos the day was warm and sunny. The weather was PERFECT! Hardly a cloud in the sky. Joanne said she had prayed for a nice day, and we got it. I like to say, If you could order weather, this is the weather you would order.






I “cropped” the image I used for the cover of my book from the mountain scene above

We all stayed and photographed well into the evening as you can see.
 
Then again, there is this…
If you can’t read the sign in the photo, it is reads -50 degrees.
The photo is by our daughter Jennifer and her husband Christoph Catalone as they returned to Fairbanks at 11:24pm on New Years Eve.

So how cold was it? Let’s put it this way: at 50 below, it was 90 degrees warmer than this inside your refrigerator!!
The people we were with told us that many people leave their vehicles running through the winter. If they shut off the engine of their vehicle, they wouldn’t be able to start the engine until spring. True story!
 
Side note: we made the return trip in virtually total darkness (Remember, 90 miles). We were driving on a service road with no signs or guardrails. If you went over the edge, it was about 300 feet to the valley below. Joe was driving, when suddenly there seemed to be no road ahead. At the last moment Joe realized that he must have come to a corner. He made a quick left turn, and on we went. We did get some nice photos of the aurora.

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- Jan