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Well last night’s sleep was interesting, it never got really dark and twilight was probably a better way to describe the 4 or so hours of night.
This morning we caught the 10:30 am 6 hr return bus into the Denali Nat Park and almost immediately, critters started appearing. First a gray wolf (gray to white) trotted on the road just in front of our bus for about 50m before catching a small rodent and disappearing into the grassy undergrowth - we know wolf sightings are quite rare so what a start to today. Then we came across a mother grizzly with two 2 year old cubs (they are all light brown to cream coloured) and she also trotted along in front on the road for a while, soon after that we met up with a lone grizzly who likewise, trotted in front for a while before trying to eat a red luminescent plastic cone road marker (see the photo). We also saw a few lone moose in the distance here and there (much lighter brown colour than yesterday’s sighting) We also saw a couple of small caribou herds (very large deer with beards and large antlers) and some long horn
sheep (quite big sheep with long spriral shaped horns - these guys stick to the high cliffs on mountain sides to avoid wolves. So, all in one day, we saw The Big Five ! - I’ts likely that we (our bus) were the fortunate ones out here today or maybe even for this week.
We saw many snowshoe hares near and on the road (these guys are high country rabbits with large white feet, they wholly turn white in winter and their babies are born with fur). We also saw ptarmigans, the Alaskan State Bird, which are brown and white, small fowl size and they eat spruce tree shoots in the hard times. We also saw a large hooked eared owl in a spruce tree with a rather large chick in the nest. Strangely, there are seagulls in here, they look very normal except for their feet which are a greeny yellow, we only saw them eating small roadkill. Our driver thought today was a very good day for animal viewing. The weather ranged from snow, rain, wind and then some sun and it changes all the time in this Park. We travelled 63 miles in before backtracking our way
out. In order to preserve the wilderness, cars are only allowed in to the 13 mile mark. The bus trip is billed as a hop on/hop off deal but I wouldn’t like to do it at the moment away from the two featured stop points due to the number of grizzlies around, but we did see at least two couples doing this - I hope they are not mentioned on the TV News anywhere tonight.
The scenery is mostly high plains desert type. The road meanders thru those rolling lands and beside a large old glacier flat valley with round stones and with streams flowing thru there. The backdrop is always picturesque snow covered mountains. The road became one lane for a long while and we crossed thru two high passes with no road rails and there were massive fall aways down to ravines; passing other buses wasn’t easy but was well organised between the drivers. The trees below the treeline, which here occurs at 1700 feet, are white spruce. Low twisted willows then take over higher up with various grasses and berries which are not yet in season (this type of plant life and area is also called tundra).
The snowshoe hares eat the bark from the craggy willows and so do the moose, so it tough going up here for all the fauna and flora. ...NB no photos at pres check here again in 12 hours
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