Day 9- Back to Fairbanks

The next morning we packed everything up and  left around 10. We stopped at Savage River  again and climbed up a small hill. At the  top was a amazing view of the valley and we shot a segment of me explaining glacially  formed valleys. We also shot a segment where  Peter, a classmate, used a radio to talk to  Jill at the bottom of the hill. We used this  as the final sequence in our video.

We climbed the pointy hill in the upper left hand corner, which is where the rest of the pictures are taken.

We left the park and drove into Nenana  Canyon, which is right outside the park.  Everyone started calling their parents. As  they did, they realized that  many of their  parents had been worried about them. While  we were in the park, a group of 7 students  and 2 instructors (almost exactly the same  as our group) had been attacked by a bear  near Denali. This made national news, and a  few of the parents thought it might have  been us.

On the way back we stopped at the Stampede  Trail, which is where the guy from into the  wild was staying in a bus (Or so Emily told  me). Emily was slightly, just slightly,  obsessed with the book and movie, and  narrated the whole story to us in about 3  minutes. I recorded it, and although we  didn't have time to put it in the final  video, I think I will put it in a version  for all of the parents. Anyway, we stopped  and took a picture of the sign, which just  said Stampede trail.

Next we stopped at a canyon near the Usibelli Coal mine in Healy. It was a  beautiful canyon, with visible sedimentary  layering in the walls. There were a few  veins of lignite coal, which stood out from  the rest of the layers. We found a bunch of  fossils, and also did a video segment about  layering and sedimentation.

While we were there, a bunch of kids started jumping and sliding down scree slopes. We nicknamed it “screeing” These were some of the best pictures I got.

We didn't get back to the dorms to eat  dinner at the cafeteria on time, so we  stopped at a burger joint and ate dinner.  Then we drove back to the dorms and  unpacked.