Denali Road Lottery – Lost again!!!

They moved the entry up a month.  This year, you had to have your entry in by June 30 for the September 18-21 adventure.  A twist this year, and one that was rumored for the last couple (if not more) years was online entry.  In this day and age, they (the government) finally joined the digital age.  No more drawing envelopes from a hat…

I had forgotten about the entry, until my Mom sent an article from the ADN; “Last day to enter…”  So I followed the link and got in under the wire.  There is a $10 entry fee, but instead of a paper check and a trip to the post office at the last minute, I went to pay.gov, and gave a CC to cover the fee.  It actually worked fairly well…  Right up to the point where I didn’t win.  Again!

They were supposed to “post the winners by July 15.”  The whole purpose of moving it up a month was to allow the winners to make their reservations, especially those in the Lower 48 or elsewhere to plan their trip well in advance.  It was a long couple of weeks, and I started checking early this week.  No news, no news.  An announcement indicated they had issues getting the information in a timely fashion from pay.gov.  Go figure…  The government can’t even work efficiently with itself.

I checked this morning around 07:00 and nothing.  I was busy today, and had put it out of my mind.  That was, until I overhead one of the ‘loud mouths’ in the office on the phone this afternoon.  He was making reservations!  ”No, they posted the winners this afternoon…  Yes, I want to make a reservation…”

I pulled up nps.gov/dena and went to the news section.  Sure enough, the PDFs containing the winners for the four days was posted.  I quickly scanned, the B, C, and D’s to see if any of “the gang” from work had won.  The 18th, nothing.  How about the 19th; nothing.  Ok, still two more days.  The 20th, no!  Losing hope, I scanned the winners for the last day.  No, again!

Upon a third and forth look, just to seen if I missed something, I started to notice something strange.  It’s either a real coincidence, or pretty amazing, but when you scan the winners’ lists, you start to notice a lot of same last name / same city.  There is only one entry per person, but each person in a household can enter.  What is statistically amazing, is how many Bill Smith / Mary Smith – Fairbanks, or even more amazing the Billy, Mary, and Sammy Podunk from Big Lake, Alaska.  Amazingly coincidental an apparent entire family wins.  What are the odds of three out of three, in the approximate 1600 winners???

For some reason, I was really looking forward to going this year.  Had the trip all planned in my mind, only to be dashed in the end.

Ok, so I can sulk for a bit and look ahead to next year.  Oh well…

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