Denali National Park and Preserve

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We had a long day today but very enjoyable. We took an 8 hour bus trip through part of Denali Park. When you travel on this road, you go between the Alaska Range and the Outer Range. We went from Denali to Eielson which was 66 miles. We could have taken a longer trip for 11 hours and 83 miles. The road on this trip is paved for the first 15 miles. You can drive yourself these first 15 miles. So, if you really want to see much, you need to take the bus. After the first 15 miles, the road is two-lane and gravel. At mile 30, it becomes one lane and gravel. When you start out, the elevation is around 1700 and the highest elevation in the trip is around 4000. So, it is very interesting to be traveling on this one lane gravel road with no guardrails and you meet another bus as you are going around a mountain. I had some very ohhhhhh moments. Our bus driver, Joyce, has been doing this for 23 years. Good driver. She gave us some very good information. As you start out, the terrain is black and white spruce trees. It is called Taiga(which is I believe is Russian for "land of little sticks"). The reason they say little sticks is that the spruce are very thin. They might be 100 to 200 years old but they have such a short growing season, they don't develop into big trees. They might be 40 ft. tall but very thin. As you go a little farther and get into the elevation above 2700 ft. (above the tree range) you get an area called tundra. This is more rocky and grass. We saw Caribou, Dall Sheep, a Red Fox, Grizzly Bears, Moose and the state bird, the Ptarmigan. I thought some of this information was interesting. Moose eat willow shrubs - about 50 to 100 lbs. a day. Bears eat blueberries 24 hrs. a day starting around August before they start hibernating in Oct. or Nov. The Ptarmigan, the state bird, kind of looks like a large quail. In the summer, it is brown, then in the winter it becomes all white to protect it in the snow. The road into the park usually opens around the 3rd week of May and closes about the middle of September. The closing is according to the snowfall. Joyce says it snows about 6 ft. there. She says that about the middle of March, they go out and start to plow the road, so that it can dry out.

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