We got up early in Talkeetna and started driving to Denali National Park, about 2 1/2 hours away. It was cloudy and rainy and cold, we could only see the base of the mountains as we were driving towards the park, and it was looking like the weather would be disappointingly similar to the day before.
Small black bear crossing the road (Check out the terrible weather):
Denali National Park has one road leading into it- and only tour buses from the park are allowed to drive through. We had tickets for an 11-hour round-trip bus ride, going 85 miles into the park to Wonder Lake and back. With the tour buses, you can get out anytime you want, hike a little, and then flag down another bus to get back out of the park, or you can just stick with your same bus the whole way. We were taking the last bus in, so we stuck with the same bus the whole way, since there wouldn't be another one coming along that could pick us up. We got in the bus and started driving through the park. After seeing the road, I was really glad to be on the bus- it was unpaved, and there were no guard rails, and the buses climbed to some pretty high elevations. There's a lottery that Alaskan residents can enter to drive through the park in the fall on their own, but after seeing those roads, I think the bus is just fine. Whenever people saw animals, they would call out, and the driver would stop.
Caribou (you might need to double-click on the picture to see it):
Brown Bear (another double-clicker):
Two bull moose (one is grazing to the lower left, the other's antlers are showing to the left of the bushes in the lower center)
Better shot of the grazing moose:
As we got further into the park and through some mountains, we caught a view of Denali, and we were able to see the mountain throughout the rest of the trip. It was spectacular. The mountain was the one thing I wanted to see in the park, and so it was awesome to get to. The mountain is so huge, it creates it's own weather system, so it rarely is clear, only 30% of the people who visit the park get to see it. According to my tour guide-book, Denali (over 20,000 feet tall) rises from it's base 18,230 feet, while Mt. Everest, which starts at a higher elevation, only rises 10,000 feet from it's base, so Denali is the more dramatic view. I thought that was pretty cool.
First views of Denali:
Mountain Goats:
More Mountains, and views of Denali:
The mountain was so beautiful, I just kept taking pictures of it. It's neat to see the darker, 'normal' mountains at the base, it helps gauge just how massive this mountain is:
Incredible wind is the culprit of my bad 80's side hair-do:
Wonder Lake- 85 miles into the park, and our turnaround point. We picked blueberries and fed mosquitoes, good times all around:
Incredible quilt:
We didn't get back from the tour until late, and then grabbed some dinner. By the time we were ready to head to our camp site, a huge storm was coming in. I had forgotten my tarp for the tent, and we were pretty exhausted, and the prospect of pitching the tent and then dealing with a downpour all night was not appealing at all. So we started calling hotels to see if we could find one for a reasonable rate so late at night. We found a room at Backwoods Inn in Cantwell, about 3o minutes south of Denali Park, and right at the entrance of the Denali Highway, which we were planning to drive the next way. The room was really nice, with a porch and flowers and a mini-kitchen, and we were really grateful to get some good sleep, we really needed it.
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