DENALI NATIONAL PARK

Yeah, we're here

Today's post will include yesterday and today's adventures.  Yesterday we arrived at Denali National Park and went directly to the Wilderness Access Center.  They printed our bus tickets for tomorrow's eight hour drive to Mile 66 Eielson Visitor Center.  The tickets set us back about $70 but it's the only way to get that far into the park since no cars are allowed more than 12 miles into the park.  We also wanted find out if they had any open sites at Riley Creek Campground.  As we suspected, the answer was a big fat "no".  That's okay because they get $25 per night with no hookups and we noticed a nice scenic turnout about seven miles away from the entrance with phone and internet capability.

We parked at the visitor's center for the day and got ourselves acclimated, watched a movie, listened to a ranger program, stamped our passport, took a nature trail walk and checked out the gift store. Then we went back to our turnout for the night.  I set the alarm for 5:30.

It's very strange to wake up to an alarm but it did the trick and we got to the Wilderness Access Center in plenty of time for coffee, toast and a banana before we needed to get in line for the bus. We were, literally, loaded for bear with our hiking gear, backpacks, binoculars, cameras, food and water. 

Our bus for eight hours

We finally saw grizzly bears, seven of them in all.  We needed binoculars to see most of them but a few were close enough to see without them.  We also got to see quite a few caribou, some were bulls, and a red fox.  It's so exciting to see these animals in the wild and everyone in the bus goes crazy taking pictures.  The bus driver stops whenever someone shouts "stop" then everyone says what? where? do you see it? which side? then it gets quiet because we don't want to scare the animal away. It's way too cool!

Arctic Squirrel

The backside of a red fox

Bull Caribou

Our best photo of a Grizzly Bear

Colorful caterpillar

Caribou traffic jam

State bird of Alaska - Ptarmigan

Dall Sheep are high up on the ridges and look like white spots without binoculars

When we got to Eielson Visitors Center, we had planned on taking the ranger-led hike along the Thorofare Ridge Trail but decided to just go on our own.  It was a 2-mile hike which is usually a piece of cake but a climb of 1,000 feet in elevation on steep hard-packed gravel switchbacks made it a thigh burner. It's a 40-60 minute hike one way.  The view of Denali and the Alaska Range were incredible from the top.

Our view from the top of our climb

Isn't this beautiful?

It was a long day but not as long as those people who took the bus to Mile 85 Wonder Lake, a 11- hour round trip or Mile 90 Kantishna, a 12-hour round trip.  

We could hardly wait to get back to our turnout and look at all the pictures we took.  

That's all folks!  Thanks for stopping in.