Denali National Park

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This trip has gone really well. The weather, which obviously is out of our control, has been fantastic. The planning, which we did control, was very good with one exception. I planned today to be an 8 hour bus tour of Denali National Park. Three years ago, I couldn't fit this into my itinerary and drove into the park with the Suburban to see what I could see. Well, you can only drive private vehicles 16 miles into the park and that doesn't afford you much of a look at the park.

My mistake was driven by the faulty memory that it was about 50 miles from Talkeetna to Denali. It's more like 115 miles, which would take about 2-1/2 hours. We had to meet the tour bus at 8:15 AM, so we woke up around 5:30 to get on the road. Marilyn took the wheel and got us to the McKinley Lodge, our bus pick up spot, in plenty of time to grab a cup of coffee before boarding the bus.

The bus wasn't the most comfortable, kind of like a school bus. We were already getting a bit anxious about this all day excursion. So far, we hadn't seen any caribou or moose and were hoping to see them and maybe some more brown bears. It was a drizzly morning and the totally overcast cloud layer was very low.

We got lucky very early after entering the park, when we spotted a cow moose in the brush near the road. During our tour we saw several Caribou, Brown Bears and Dall Sheep but almost always a long way from the road, especially the Dall Sheep, which stay in fairly high, rocky areas.

We never got any kind of view of Mt. McKinley due to the low cloud cover. That bummed us out because that was one of the reasons we wanted to go into the park on the tour. We all took turns sleeping since you could count on being awakened by the passengers' screams whenever they saw wildlife. Marilyn told me that I had the most expensive nap of my life. I slept almost all through the tour except for wildlife sightings and rest stops.

I guess if the skies were clear and we hadn't seen the bears in Katmai and flown around Mt. McKinley, the tour would have been a lot more interesting.

This would be our last full day in Alaska, so after dinner we started a fire in front of the cabin, while enjoying another beautiful evening, relaxed and reflected on this vacation. I think we all agreed that it ranks right up there with our other adventures together. We talked about possible future trips; Tahiti, train tour of national parks, Cnadian Rockies, Australia....who knows? Tomorrow we have a late flight home. It's been another fantastic vacation!

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Photos

Arctic Ptarmigan
They turn completely white in the winter.

Power of Glaciers
Huge stone formation pushed up by a glacier.

Comments

[Dan Flaherty]

8 hour Bus Ride
Great pictures, but didn't you capture the iconic Alaskan Squirrel we stopped bus for ? I did enjoy the tasty elk meat sandwiches they provided ! Perhaps the bus ride could have been cut by about 7 hours.

[Snowhawg]

8 Hour Bus Ride
AHHHH! The elusive Arctic Ground Squirrel! Didn't get a good picture of it. My hands were shaking with excitement!

[VirgoGirl98]

i've always wanted to visit alaska! thanks for the pics!