Denali National Park - AK

We got to Denali National Park around 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 16th. Got a nice campsite and got set up for a week. The Park Road that goes into the interior of the park is 90 miles long and automobiles are only allowed to go the first 15 miles. The rest of the park is accessible only by shuttle and tour busses. We drove in the first 15 miles to the Savage River turnaround and the scenery is awesome. The road follows wide valleys and tundra with the high mountains of the Alaska Range on either side. At one stretch of a couple of miles Mt. McKinley is visible off to the southwest - weather permitting. Guess what??? The weather permitted!! They say that the mountain is only visible about 20% of the time and that most park visitors don’t get to see it. Heck, on our first day (of seven) there it was!!



At the Savage River turnaround we saw a whole flock of Willow Ptarmigans. Here’s a picture.



On Thursday we shopped a little in the town of Denali Park which is just outside the National Park entrance and rode up the highway a little just looking at the scenery. The Nenana River runs through the valley and the road crosses it several times. Here is a picture of the river taken from the bridge just out of Denali Park.



We also rode back into park the 15 miles on Park Road to the Savage River turnaround and did a little hiking. On the way back we got our first “up close and personal” look at a Bull Moose.



On Friday we took the Wonder Lake shuttle bus tour into the park - 170 miles round-trip, 11 hours. It rained and snowed about all day and the road is a combination of dirt and gravel. It was a muddy mess! The bus was a Blue Bird school bus - here’s a picture.



Not only is the road not paved, it is very narrow - scary in lots of the places, especially when we were meeting another bus going in the opposite direction. Our driver managed to keep us on the road!

Here are a couple of pictures of the road and surrounding landscape.







Muddy, narrow roads notwithstanding, it was an AWESOME trip! The scenery is indescribable - wide river bottoms and valleys with high mountains on either side. Much of the area is above the tree line and is tundra.

Here is a beautiful scene taken from the Eielson Visitor Center - 66 miles into the park!



We didn’t see as much wildlife as we thought we would, but we did see some caribou, several Golden Eagles, Willow Ptarmigans, Doll Sheep, and three Grizzly Bears.

Here is a picture of a mother Grizzly with her cub.




Today we took it a little easier. Walked a couple of trails and LaVerne finally got to see the bird she’s been searching for - the Boreal Chickadee!! We also went to the sled dog kennels and watched the dog sled demonstration.