Denali arrival day

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We left Anchorage about 10.30am for Denali National Park about 250 miles inland after obtaining some quick food stocks from our local mall. The drive was uneventful passing thru suburbs and towns. We did see a few businesses advertising building log cabins with examples out front; we saw float planes on a river bank and on a lake. Whilst mentioning this, Alaska has the highest number of float planes than anywhere else in the USA (we saw them at the side of the main Anchorage International Airport where they have a water runway and at the local airport where I assume they also have a water runway). The road traffic up here is much less dense than in the lower 48 states. Slowly the predominant silver birches gave way to medium density spruce (skinny Christmas trees) as we slowly ascended higher and further into the highlands and plateaus towards the park. As we approached Denali, all the trees were all spruce. Our accommodation at McKinley Creekside Cabins is a bit like what we had at Cradle Mountain, separate cabins almost in the bush and beside a creek. As we arrived here early, after booking in we drove further on into the park. En route and by sheer luck, near the road, we came across a lone moose with antlers grazing near then strolling thru a pond - our first moose ! (see the photo). We continued on and went to the visitor centre organising tomorrow’s hop on hop off bus trip. This will go deep into the Denali Wilderness within the Nat Park as far as Toklat River because further on the raod is still closed. Tomorrow’s bus trip of this type will be different to past hop on hops offs in the big cities, because tomorrow’s in the wilderness with just landscape, cool air, hopefully sunny and possibly some critters to see. Whilst in the nearby village we got gas for $4.58 a US gallon; which is surely a world record for the USA (it was $3.99 in Anchorage (according to the radio this morning is now averaging $3.95 down south). On the drive back to our cabin, Maurs spotted some moose in scrub near a RV park so we U turned back. We patiently waited on a side road and were rewarded, when two moose made their way out from the underbrush and into the RV park so we could take some unusual pictures - see the attached photos as they explain this little story better than we can here.
We are both tired now at about 10.30pm and ready for bed but its still daylight!- sunset isn’t due until 11.40pm, so this will be different.
Also found out yesterday that the public in Alaska are now using high cost diesel generator power for the time being due to power station(s) problems up here; the cost has quadrupled and no-one is happy about it.

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