(Denali National Park Road Lottery Trip: September 2004) Back in July, Kate and I submitted our chance to try and win a spot for the annual Road Lottery trip that the National Park Service does every year. By luck, and on our first try, we managed to win a spot. The date I chose was September 18, 2004 - the day after my birthday. When you win the road lottery it allows you to drive the entire distance of the Park Road within Denali National Park. Normally you can drive as far in as Savage River with your own car. The rest of the distance you would have to take a park bus. The lottery is run at the end of the season usually before the weather gets bad. Kate and I were glad to take along three friends from school who had never been this far into the park - Ken Papp, Kristen Dean, and Marc Gould. We all left Fairbanks at 5:30 AM on the 18th. It took a couple hours to get there with a temperature along the way eventually reaching 14 F a little bit before getting to the park. A couple days earlier it had snowed about 8 inches in some areas of the park with less accumulations in the rest of the park. It turned out to make the scenery very pretty. The day had started out to be cold and clear, but eventually warmed up to the mid to upper 30's in the park and became overcast in high cirrostratus clouds.