Food and a View

In which our Lady finally continues her Account of Denali. 

              Ah, Denali.  I find myself thinking of you here in Anchorage on this cold cloudy day…

              Jon’s dad, Clyde, was good enough to do the driving and provide the camping gear.  Camping is pretty cheap if you can mooch off of someone with bigger, better stuff than you’ve ever before seen.  I had a real eyeful on this trip.  And by the way, my side of the family’s idea of camping involves bringing an inadequate sleeping bag, a small tent, and a fishing pole.  Feeling cold in the middle of the night?  Tough.  Need food?  Go catch it!  Bait’s bad?  Guess you’ll have to starve.  Okay, I’m exaggerating a little—although the near starvation thing did happen that one time in what I can only assume was someone’s badly timed bait joke.  But Clyde has the works: cots, cooking utensils of all sizes and shapes, a travel size bag of spices, a little gas heater for your tent, etc…  Before Alaska I didn’t even know that people had special hiking shoes just to keep out water, and that they sold special pants just for camping—although I had figured out by that point that camping in jeans could be a miserably wet experience.  I am a creature of comfort, after all. 

              So anyway, I am starting to get into this over-the-top camping thing.  I packed like a refugee, especially when it came to food.  I bought some thinly sliced steaks and marinated them in a sauce made from ranch dressing, 2 tomatillos, and a bunch of cilantro, all blended up together before we left home.  I also sautéed some onions and green peppers to lay on top of said exquisite steak.  Here are a couple of photos:

              But the grand finale was my banana s’more:

              Getting back to Clyde: he’s also handy as a tour guide as he’s one of those few people who have actually climbed Mt. McKinley.  It’s interesting to see that white part of the mountain as “glacier that we had to climb up, roped to each other…”  Although, in my opinion, a few more “I almost died right there on that ridge!” sentences might really spice up the story of the great McKinley boy scout trip—legendary in our Stake here in Anchorage.  Apparently, though, Clyde didn’t know you could see the side of McKinley from where we were in Denali park, because it’s usually so cloudy on the peak.  Here’s McKinley with at least a few of the usual clouds from the usual viewing area:

And one from the back:

              For being a point and shoot camera, my zoom is awesome.  Too bad I don’t really know how to use the thing to get the lighting right…