Day 8

Woke up at 630am, packed up and got to the road. Pretty uneventful hike out to the road, we took the social trail on the east side of the river as we did on the way in. We had to bushwhack a little bit but found the old jeep trail by the river that runs .25 miles to the road. Made such good time that we had some waiting...so we got out the cards and played Rummy on the side of the road. Who would have guessed we looked like such a spectacle, the tourist buses which flew by all morning occasionally stopped in front of us so the tourists could take pictures of us. I can just see the caption in their photo album "Real Live Backpackers playing Cards". Hilarious.

The 1st camper bus of the morning picked us up coming from Wonder Lake. It was a bus full of DIRTY DRUNK people that had been in Kantishna for the music festival over the weekend. One particullarly obnoxious drugged out chick would NOT shut up for the first 2 hours but finally passed out snoring. Saw a grizzly and a cariboo on the busride out. It is a long bus ride after 8 days of hiking. We got off at Riley Creek Campsite where we set up our tent just outside of the small city of RVs and found the shower. All we had for soap, shampoo etc. was Dr. Bronner's pepermint soap (we use it for dishes) so our hair came out with a very interesting texture. But we were clean and happy. It was such a fun trip. We hiked into the small town of Denali for some dinner and re-integration with society, called family to let them know we had made it etc. The next morning we decided to catch the train from Denali to Anchorage, which was an adventure as well....if you get a chance to ride this train be sure to seek out anybody who waves down the train for a ride into town, we met a VERY interesting character living in the Alaskan Bush.