A Week Between Denali and Fairbanks
Friday, August 7th, 2026
I had two more days in Denali and had pretty much done all the things I came here to do. There were plenty more trails to hike and places to explore, but one thing I hadn’t realized was that I hadn’t been driving much since I’d been here, and the batteries in the van were getting low. Think no refrigeration, no lights, no Starlink/Internet, and no heat if I needed it.
I decided to visit the town of Cantwell, south of the park. It had actually been on my itinerary as a possible place to stop overnight before going to Denali National Park, but I hadn’t needed to. The drive was about an hour south and would allow me to charge the batteries to some reasonable level. Starlink uses quite a bit of power, so I had been trying to conserve what I had for running the rest of the van.
Cantwell isn’t a town with a center, sidewalks and small coffee shops. It’s mostly a gas stop along the road between Anchorage, Talkeetna, Denali and all points north. There were a couple of what I now call “coffee boxes” along the road, where you pull up to a little building and order a coffee through the window. They usually have pretty good coffee as well.
I saw a street sign for “Denali Rd” and decided to follow it. There’s not much along the road, and it eventually leads to a small airport. As I drove west, I saw two planes landing and heard a third buzzing nearby as I approached the airport. I crossed the railroad tracks for the train between Anchorage and Fairbanks and then noticed the plane coming in for a landing. There were signs warning drivers to be aware of landing aircraft, so I stopped at the stop sign and let the plane land unimpaired. It probably wouldn’t have hit the van, but I didn’t want to cause the pilot any unnecessary panic.
Soon after, the road turned to gravel and I turned the van around. I stopped near the runway again and watched the planes finding their own little nooks. Clearly, aircraft are a common mode of transportation in this part of Alaska. People live in places that aren’t easily reached by road, and there are private guides taking hunters, photographers and others into remote areas for days or weeks at a time.
I drove back toward the campground and then north to the Three Bears grocery store to stock up again. For some strange reason, this small grocery store had Gruyère cheese. My favorite. This was the real deal, extra-aged Gruyère, not Emmi or Boar’s Head. I took the last chunk to go with the one I had purchased on my previous visit.
I filled up the rest of the evening learning how to use my Garmin 67i. I researched trails in the area and downloaded one to the device. The forecast called for light rain in the morning.
Saturday, August 8th
I was already behind on the blog, but I decided to take some time to continue working on expanding the site to add Guides and a Gallery of photos. The gallery requires going through a lot of images and pulling out the better ones. I knew this wasn’t going to be a few hours of work, but I began the process anyway.
There were a few raindrops later in the morning, but I don’t think you could even call it a light rain. Weather events seem to come at any time here in Denali and disappear almost as quickly as they arrive.
The light sprinkle had just stopped when a father with two young kids walked by. They were probably three and five. The youngest stopped right in front of my van door, and I happened to be standing there when he did. He waved to me, and in German I said hello and asked how he was. He just stood there looking at me. The father eventually came back to retrieve him, and we talked for a bit.
For some reason, I heard a lot of German that day. Some people had rented campers, some had driven their huge Mercedes campers here, and others were traveling in groups. It was one of those days when I seemed to hear German everywhere I went.
By noon, I set out on my hike using the Garmin 67i to guide me. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I was several miles from the actual trailhead and hiked from the campground in the wrong direction. After hiking down the wrong trail for about 90 minutes, I returned to the van and used AllTrails and Google Maps to figure out where I was actually supposed to be.
The Horseshoe Lake Trail is about a three-mile loop near the Denali Visitor Center.
The trail drops through the forest toward Horseshoe Lake, with several overlooks along the way before reaching the water.
From above, you can see how the lake gets its name as it curves around the forest below. Once down near the lake, the trail follows the shoreline and passes the Nenana River before eventually climbing back toward the visitor center.
It’s considered a relatively easy hike, although the climb back up makes you work a little harder than the distance suggests. After some of the off-trail hiking I had done earlier in the week, though, this felt very civilized. There were actual signs, an actual trail, and very little chance of ending up waist-deep in a river.
Once I was finally on the correct trail, I was able to use the Garmin to route me around the loop. I felt like I had mastered about 10 percent of the device. If you’re thinking about purchasing a Garmin 67i, I would suggest spending more time than I did researching what people say about it. It is excellent for routing, SOS messaging, marking waypoints and getting you back to a trail if you get lost. It also has one of the worst user interfaces I’ve ever seen. Very little is intuitive, and you have to learn a whole collection of terms that initially make very little sense.
Back at the van, I spent some time reading about Fairbanks and documenting what I needed to do while I was there. On Monday, I had an appointment to have the noise in the rear of the van looked at. It sounded like there might be a rock somewhere around the brake area, but I couldn’t see anything.
I was in bed somewhere between 10 and 11 and made a cup of Sleepytime tea. After my two hikes—one of them unintentional—it worked really well.
Sunday, August 9th — Departure Day
I was up before 7 and made French toast and a double espresso for breakfast. I caught up on a few emails before heading to the Mercantile to shower, do laundry, dump the waste tanks and fill the fresh water tank. By the time I finished everything, it was noon and I was finally on my way to Fairbanks.
There are several campgrounds around Fairbanks. Some start at around $89 a night, one had a bad record of vandalism and other problems, and another was north of town in Fox, Alaska. I called the number on their website, which told me to call another number. That number didn’t answer for about 30 minutes. When I finally got through, I explained that I just needed somewhere to park for four nights and didn’t need electricity, water or sewer hookups. The price was $40 a night, which was higher than what I had seen other people quote.
I arrived at Moose North RV Park around 4. A man with a long white beard greeted me—think Santa Claus. They took credit cards or cash, he said. After I paid, he showed me the shower, laundry and restrooms and pointed across the way to my site.
There was no cell coverage, and for some reason Starlink was extremely slow (< 1MB). I settled in and made pasta primavera with Gruyère cheese. My online Usage seemed to be limited to emails, text and minimal web browsing.
Monday, August 10th — Brake Pad Replacement
I arrived at Seekins Ford in Fairbanks at 6:30 a.m. The Quick Lane opened at 7. I had previously given them my email address and cell number and asked for a confirmation, which I never received. All I really knew was that I supposedly had an appointment on the 10th.
They took the van in around 9, and about 20 minutes later someone came out with the bad news. The right rear passenger-side brake pad had no braking material left. I was driving metal-on-metal. The other rear side was almost gone as well.
They needed to replace the brake rotors, which they had, but they also needed to order special bolts used to mount everything back together. I’m not sure why these aren’t included with the Ford parts, because the bolts have to be replaced once they’re removed. I was initially told it could take 10 days to get them from Sacramento.
After some discussion, one of the parts people told me they could expedite the order and that the bolts would most likely be in Fairbanks on Thursday. “No guarantees,” they said. Three days sounded considerably better than ten, so I asked them to expedite the shipment.
They also told me there was no way for them to track the parts because all of that was handled by Ford. The parts would be there when they were there. I asked them to let me know when they arrived. My phone number was in the system, but my email address was not, which explained why I hadn’t received the appointment confirmation. I gave them my email again and I wrote it down on the work order.
Before I left, they told me I shouldn’t drive the van. I explained that I at least had to drive it the ten miles back to the campground.
What bothered me even more was that I had never received a brake warning light. Avoiding exactly this kind of problem was one of the reasons I had taken the van to Ford in Kirkland for an inspection before heading north.
New rear brake pads have about 12 mm of material. At 7 mm, Ford’s inspection sheet still puts them in the acceptable range, although that is right at the bottom of it. In Kirkland, after almost 48,000 miles, they measured 7 mm remaining on the rear brakes and told me I didn’t have anything to worry about until my next 10,000-mile service. A little over 5,000 miles later, one rear pad was completely gone and the other was nearly gone. Something didn’t—and still doesn’t—make sense.
I drove back to the campground and spent the next couple of days working on photos, reading and catching up on things in the van while I waited for parts. I couldn’t move.
Wednesday, August 12th
Late in the afternoon (two days later), I called Seekins Ford and explained that I was waiting to received a text or email. The guy on the phone told me the part was in and also said there was still no email address in the system. I asked him to enter it, and he told me Owen probably had it written on a sheet of paper. I knew he did. My question was why there was a place in the computer for an email address while everyone kept writing mine down on pieces of paper and never entering it in their system.
Anyway, he transferred me to Owen, who confirmed that I had an appointment at 9 a.m. the next morning. They were still waiting for one part, however, and once again they couldn’t tell me whether it had shipped, where it was, or what the chances were that it would arrive that day. They would let me know if it arrived.
About two hours later, I received both a text and an email confirming that the final part had arrived and that they would see me at 9 the next morning. Apparently my email address had finally found its way into the computer.
Thursday, August 13th — Progress
I arrived a few minutes before 9, dropped off the key and asked them to save the old parts so I could inspect them. I stayed in the waiting room for the next five hours. They had guest Wi-Fi, which was extremely fast. I seemed to be the only person using it.
While I waited, I watched several videos about the exact problem I was having—worn brakes and complete rotor replacement. Several pointed out that both the inner and outer brake pads should be measured. To properly inspect the inner pad, you need access behind the wheel. When they showed me my old parts, I could clearly see that the outer brake pads were extremely worn while the inner pads had considerably less wear.
I still can’t say with certainty why the brakes went from 7 mm to essentially zero in about 5,000 miles. What was clear was that something had changed dramatically, and the pads should have received considerably more attention in Kirkland than they did.
With the van finally repaired, I spent the rest of the day shopping and preparing for my trip to Deadhorse, Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean.
East Ramp Wood-Fired Pizza
On the opposite side of the runway from the terminal at Fairbanks International Airport is East Ramp Wood-Fired Pizza. It’s on the top floor of a building, which struck me as an unusual place to put a wood-fired oven. Apparently, it is the old control tower building. I arrived around 6 p.m., and there were a few cars scattered around the unpaved parking lot along with signs saying, “Please do not park by planes.” I climbed the outside stairs to the top.
When you enter, they give you two sheets of paper, one for food and one for drinks. They told me to sit anywhere and mark what I wanted on the menus. I didn’t see pizza sizes listed, so I asked. All of the regular pizzas were 12 inches, but they could make a 6-inch pizza if I wanted one.
I ordered a 6-inch Margherita pizza, a fresh greens side salad and a 16-ounce local stout. It came to $36.63. I looked at the total and thought, that is real inflation.
I left around 7 and noticed that the entire restaurant was now full, with more people waiting outside. The woman at the front told me that most of them were waiting for takeout. The salad was really fresh, the wood-fired pizza was good, the beer was tasty, and the prices were crazy high.
For the next few hours, I sat in the parking lot checking batteries, vacuuming, packing and reading about my trip to Deadhorse the next morning. Around 10:30, I drove over to long-term parking at Fairbanks International Airport, parked the van and tried to sleep. The airport finally quieted down around midnight.