You’ve always wanted to run all night, right? How about running all night on a shell of salt up to five feet thick? I bet you’ve always wanted to do that too. Jason and I signed up for the Dusk to Dawn Relay, a race that literally goes from dusk to dawn on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and convinced six friends to get salty with us. I’m so glad we did.

The Bonneville Salt Flats are 30,000 acres west of the Great Salt Lake covered in densely packed salt. The race was held on the Bonneville Speedway, a section of the Bonneville Salt Flats so level and hard that it has been used to set land speed records since 1935. We totally broke a few that night. (Obviously, I am kidding.)

The race commenced at 8:11 PM and ended at 7:01 AM. Over almost 11 hours, our eight-person team did 35 laps on a 1.71-mile loop and finished in third place. Not too bad for a group in it to… just run around a bunch and have a good time.

In addition to chatting with teammates and running loops, scheduled activities provided steady entertainment. One of my favorites was viewing Saturn and Jupiter through telescopes provided by the UVU Astronomy Club while eating Milky Way candy bars. Pretty cosmic!

We divided our running slots in the middle of the night so everyone could take a nap. At least, that was the theory. Jason and I accepted the time period no one wanted between 2:00 and 3:30 AM. We had one hour and 40 minutes to snooze before our turn, but we were unsuccessful in falling asleep.

Although we had the worst slot for resting, it was the best in other ways. From 2:00-4:00, the race organizers turned out all their lights. So, Jason and I got to dash under a sky swirling with sparkling specks unveiled by the new moon and our remote location. It was one of the best celestial spectacles I have ever seen.

The stars were a shimmering net cast over us, but the sunrise might have been even more beautiful. The heavens seemed to curve around us as bottomless blue turned into brilliant orange. I felt like I was inside a snow globe filled with hovering clouds that would be shaken back into the stratosphere by some unseen hand at any moment.

And the running? The course was flat (yup… Salt Flats), but the crunchy grooves and sticky brine represented a different kind of challenge. Plus, the sparkling firmaments kept us looking up instead of at where we were treading. I did five loops and Jason did seven. In total, I completed just over 8.5 miles and Jason 12. Why so many for Jason? He was definitely a victim of his own hustle. Jason was nominated to start the race and do the last loop when there were only 15 minutes left on the clock.

And the weather? The temperatures were nice, though a little chilly between about 5:00 and 7:00 AM. The wind was manageable even when it picked up for a few hours in the middle of the night. Salt would have gotten everywhere without that, but it certainly helped spread the saline. Yes, salt even got there.

Jason and I thought we would be okay to drive home after the race without taking a nap. We were wrong. About an hour or so from home, we both suddenly realized we had only minutes until sleeping wouldn’t be optional. We had to pull into a rest stop for a quick 20-minute snooze.

The Dusk to Dawn Relay was a memorable, fun, and unexpectedly stunning event. We felt like jerky cured in salt the next day. But man, what an experience! If you get the opportunity to run Dusk to Dawn, I’d go for it.

Driving from Denali to Seward would have been a lengthy task under the best conditions. For us, this drive was extended substantially by the McKinley Fire, which was burning on both sides of the Parks Highway for a 20-mile stretch, and road damage caused by floods. The fire had produced four-hour delays the previous day, but fortunately, we only had to halt about 45 minutes while waiting for a pilot car to take our direction of traffic through the smolder.

Despite the unwanted stops, there were still a couple stops we wanted to make. We paused at Beluga Point on the Turnagain Arm to sing “Baby Beluga” and at Alyeska Resort to take the tram to the top of Mt. Alyeska. Smoke made viewing the seven glaciers that surround Mt. Alyeska’s summit less than ideal but still possible. Past Alyeska, we hit delays again, this time because of flooding. We didn’t arrive in Seward until right before midnight. Why didn’t we just take an alternate path? The thing about Alaska is that there usually isn’t an alternate route. In fact, many locations can’t be accessed by road at all and require a boat or plane to reach. We planned our destinations for this trip based on vehicular accessibility. Expecting multiple ways to arrive at any of those destinations would have been greedy.

Our first day in Seward, we went on a six-hour boat cruise through Kenai Fjords National Park. This cruise was rather cold thanks to a constant wind. I combated that by wearing a short-sleeved shirt, long-sleeved shirt, two coats, a neck gaiter, and gloves; all those layers kept the temperatures tolerably pleasant. And our issues with smoke and blazes weren’t over. Due to Alaska’s unusually dry summer, even its temperate rainforest was in flames. The Swan Lake Fire, which had already burned about 150,000 acres on the Kenai Peninsula, was flaring up due to high winds. The resulting smog made the cliffs and headlands of Resurrection Bay nothing more than dark, jagged giants as our cruise began. That haziness decreased as the day progressed but never completely dissipated.

Despite the murk, the cruise was a beautiful experience filled with vulnerable aquatic life and nature’s dramatic sculpting. We saw a bald eagle, black-legged kittiwakes, tufted puffins, horned puffins, common murres, sea otters, Stellar sea lions, and double-crested cormorants. Out of the birds, the puffins were my favorite. They flapped their wings like crazy to stay in the air. Apparently, puffins can complete up to 400 beats per minute to keep their heavy bones airborne. Those bones are reinforced to save the birds from becoming leaky sacks when they dive up to 300 feet into water. Puffins aren’t endangered, but thanks to humans their numbers are dwindling.

Aialik Glacier was our U-turn point. This glacier is one mile wide and has cliffs 300 feet high where it meets Aialik Bay rather abruptly. Although fairly stable, it calves frequently. We witnessed some of this calving; the rumbling crackles and crashing ice were unforgettable.

Our last day in Alaska, we went to Alaska SeaLife Center as our first outing. The Alaska SeaLife Center is part museum and part aquarium. It features creatures found in Alaska’s voluminous waters. My favorite area was the seabird habitat where we watched puffins dive deep into the tank for delicious herring snacks.

After the SeaLife Center, we took the two-mile hike to the face of Exit Glacier or where the face of Exit Glacier used to be. Exit Glacier, until recently, was one of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska. You could walk up to it and touch it. However, thanks to global warming, Exit Glacier’s melt rate has accelerated dramatically in the last decades. Now, almost 300 feet are dissolving each year. The park service can’t keep up with trail extensions. Although Exit was less of a hands-on experience and more of a striking reminder of the stupidity of our species, our hike was satisfying and the glacier’s katabatic wind a bracing memento of its lingering power.

That was our trip, a spectacular and smoky tramp through distinct landscapes. When we opened our suitcases upon reaching home, the campfire odor was overpowering. Alaska is a worthy destination for oh… at least a dozen vacations. It’s size and diversity mean endless options for mind-blowing adventures.

Admittedly, this excursion reminded me that I have little patience for tourists that are inconsiderate. You know, the ones that crowd out other people on tours to try to get more than their share of too-many pictures or the ones that won’t stop talking loudly when a ranger tells everyone to be quiet so the fracturing of a glacier can be heard. Yeah, I have no tolerance for that brand of thoughtlessness. If you too find selfish sightseer syndrome immensely irritating, Alaska’s most popular destinations in the peak of the tourist season may not be for you.

After Anchorage, our next stop was Denali National Park. The drive to Denali from Anchorage requires about five hours if you don’t take a break, but who doesn’t stop when they are winding through the interior of Alaska? Hence, it took us longer.

We were expecting most of this drive to be through sparse forest, or boreal forest if you want to get technical. Instead, until the last hour or so, the landscape was dense with trees and shrubs. Those plants obscured the vast bulk in front of us for who knows how long. A few hours into our journey, we suddenly caught a glimpse of a white-clad mass of a mountain climbing before us. It was a big bugger. We laughed when we later discovered we had just encountered Denali, the tallest peak in North America.

We stopped to view Denali officially at Denali Viewpoint South and completely lucked out. The sky was entirely clear and the outlook perfect. Apparently, 80% of the time Denali isn’t visible due to the storms it creates on its flanks not only because of its 20,310 feet but also because it towers three and a half miles vertically from its base. It is a mile longer from base to summit than Mt. Everest. I wish I could create a storm system to hide from the world on occasion.

We stayed in a cabin on a secluded lake just minutes from Denali National Park. It offered a refreshing change from the urban spread of Anchorage. When I say “refreshing” I mean both revitalizing and chilling. During the day, we each wore two jackets and beanies. At night, the temperatures dropped down to around freezing. This was in the middle of Alaska’s hottest months mind you.

Our first day in the park, we experienced Denali via bus. Tourists flow through Denali National Park in unusual ways. Private vehicles can only travel the first fifteen miles beyond the entrance. Past that point, the only vehicles permitted are transit buses and narrated tour buses operated by the National Park Service. Now, this isn’t Zion where you can get all the way to the end of the line in half an hour. At Denali, driving the entire length of the road and back takes about 12 hours. People do this in one long day… yeah, crazy people. The transit bus we took went as far as the Eielson Visitor Center, an eight-hour journey. That was long enough.

The bus experience felt like cultural soup. You are stuck for eight hours in a packed vehicle with 40 strangers from all over the world. Add in everyone’s eagerness to gawk at and snap pictures of the same caribou and moose, and you’ve got a recipe for a full-blown cultural clash. I felt like scientists in lab coats were taking notes behind the windows as riders dashed to get their share of each animal encounter. Though the people on the bus tested my politeness on occasion, I would do this ride all over again. (But seriously Italian guy, did you really need to push your knees into the back of my seat continually?)

Denali has few hiking trails. It’s kind of a choose-your-own-adventure park. Yup, you can pick your own means of bumping into bears. During the eight hours aboard our bus, we came across over 10 grizzlies doing bear things like foraging for berries and digging for roots. That brings me to the coolest thing about Denali. Denali felt wild and untouched in a way that even most national parks do not. Its bears aren’t like Yellowstone’s, ready to have a sip of your Diet Coke. These are creatures unaccustomed to humans and skittish around them. To maintain this skittishness, bus riders are asked to remain silent anytime a bear is spotted.

Rarer than any wildlife, we were treated to another unhindered view of Denali that day. It is the most elusive sight on the bus tours. Denali two days in a row? Luckkyyyy!

The next day, we explored Denali without a bus. First, we opted to browse the collection of shops at Denali Village, AKA “Glitter Gulch.” Though unrepentantly touristy, I’m not ashamed (mostly) to say I found numerous gifts at these stores. Maybe you got one. Afterward, we headed into the park again for a hike to the Mount Healy Overlook. This trail to the ridgeline of Mount Healy gains 1,700 feet in a little over two miles, most of that right at the end. It is so steep in a couple sections that a number of its switchbacks are only about 20 feet long. Did you know going uphill exercises your calves while going downhill exercises your quads? I never noticed that until this endeavor.

Once on Mount Healy’s ridge, you can continue on an unmaintained trail to its summit, which is another couple miles. We didn’t know where this path was leading at the time, but we were keen on following. It was spectacular and deserted on Mount Healy’s backbone. We felt like we had climbed into another world with the alpine tundra glowing around us and the frigid wind breathing the only sound. We’d reach the top of one hill and see the trail ascending the next. Curiosity would propel us up “just one more” incline until hours had passed and the sun was floating near the horizon, a position it held for hours each evening before finally surrendering to the pale sapphire of a perpetual twilight. Our time atop Mount Healy was one of the highlights of our trip. It resulted in us eating dinner in a crowded restaurant at 11:00 PM though. Packed restaurant at 11 PM? Only in Vegas and Alaska.

The next day was tiring. We drove from Denali to Seward. This trip was supposed to take less than seven hours. Instead, it took us 13. In my next post, I will uncover how our drive became a bit of a burn.