THAR’ ARE “BEARS” IN THEM THAR’ HILLS! AND THAT IS THE BEAR FACTS

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Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.-----Helen Keller

Sorry, you haven’t heard from us in a while. We have been busy having fun. Plus it is hard to get connected. So we will do what we can and finish these at a later date.

We are in Jasper and heading to Bamff next, the Rockies are awesome!!!


YOU WANT TO STAY TUNED, BECAUSE WE HAVE LOT OF PICTURES TO ADD BEARS!!!!!!!!!!.

July 23, 2005, Saturday. We are in Denali and are up at 5 AM to take the bus to Wonder Lake. Denali’s claim to fame is probably it’s remote location, the extreme and difficult terrain and the fact is, this is WILDERNESS!
Once a dirt road was developed and people began coming, the park services restricted the use of private vehicles. So to go anywhere—a bus ticket is needed. The trip to Wonder Lake is 85 miles from the Wilderness Access Center, and takes 11 hours on an extremely narrow dirt road, through mountain passes. It was a beautiful clear day so we, of course, saw THE MOUNTAIN, as well as moose, caribou, mother grizzly and two cubs, dall sheep, ptarmigan, (the state bird of Alaska, sorta like a cute chicken).
July 24, 2005, Sunday. Denali is the size of Massachusetts and it has ONE dirt road. This is a natural wildlife preserve and the rules are quite different from other national parks.
Today we decided to bike around some. From Riley Creek Campground most “roads” are uphill. We stopped at the Visitor Center; and took a Ranger lead hike in the area. It was very informative.
July 25, 2005, Monday. We hiked the Rock Creek Trail and Bob got some nice pictures of the wild flowers.
We stopped at the kennel to watch the huskies in a demo. The rangers train the huskies for winter so they are able to go into the wilderness as mushers. They appeared to be quiet friendly dogs until they realized the chance to run was a possibility. It was like a teacher was asking for someone to volunteer, and everyone was screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!”
July 26, 2005, Tuesday. We really didn’t want to sit on the bus again so we decided to take the bus to mile 47 and attempt to hike or bushwack our way up the hillside. We did this for about an hour and a half and thought a bus to another location might be better. So we walked along the dirt road up and down hills. It was close to noon when we saw a tour bus coming in the other direction. They stopped, and this is an indication wildlife is visible. We got the binoculars out and NOTHING! So we continued walking around the curve, when I heard someone shout, “BEARS!” At the same moment a mother grizzly and her triplets walked out in front of us. It was NOT as the rangers had suggested- three hundred yards, it was 50 feet or less! My first thought was, “This is not good.” I remembered the ranger saying the worse thing to “encounter” is a sow with her cubs. We began backing up the hill, Bob with his hands waving over his head and shouting to the bears, telling me to let the bears know-- I was not afraid (I was afraid). Finally I began to think--- keep backing away at a diagonal. Talk to the bears---I couldn’t!, instead I was talking to Bob. I saw Mama’s eyes and claws and the little ones kept coming toward us. Oh, shit, we are in trouble. The sow stopped and looked at us like we were strange?, then finally scampered off to the other side of the road to some blueberry bushes and the cubs followed. Talk about an adrenalin flow!!
I went over to thank the bus driver and was informed we had go with her away from the bears. That sounded great to me, even if we were going backwards. Well the bears started to come back across the road again after we got into the bus, and we finally got some pictures. We hope you enjoy the bear photos; we earned them! All is well that ends well!
July 27, 2005, Wednesday. This is our last day at Denali and we decided to do a Ranger lead hike in the tundra. In order to meet the ranger we need to get on the bus and travel 2 ½ hours to mile 59.
On the ride we spotted some “goings-on”. It involved a sow and two cubs and three rangers and one shot-gun? The excitement stemmed from a claim that a cub was seen munching on a backpack. In a natural preserve, rangers cannot allow bears to connect food with humans. It turned out to be a false alarm.
We hiked in the tundra, which is a permafrost surface (sorta mushy) with lots of shrubs and bushes, not a trail. We were encouraged to find our own path and not follow each other so as not to establish any trail. We met lots of interesting folks and had a good afternoon. On our way back we ran into a thunder storm.

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Photos

Mt. McKinley and Fireweed
You see this flower all over it is the first thing to grow after a forest fire.

Denali “The big one” This is the wilderness!!!

The mountain
We were lucky we got to see this for four days, both from the south side and north side as we drove from Anchorage

Kelly,
This is the road we were walking down. As we rounded the bend, there were the bears

Bears
There was a mother and three cubs. We did not have time to get the picture we would have likede. But we were close!!!

Mama and cub
These were different bears.

Mama
She walked right below us

Denali
You can never get enough of this mountain. The highest mountain in the US

Comments

[Al on the farm]

A Garbage dump
You asked, so - almost every day I am at the farm cleaning up. So far filled a 20 sq yd dumpster and four pickup truck loads. This guy used his barn as his private garbage dump. Denali sounds awesome!

[joyce and paul]

Sept. 12 remark
Hi, enjoying the pictures and articles. When are you coming home. I thought you said Sept.