Denali National Park, Alaska – Thursday thru Sunday, August 25 thru 28, 2011
We're pretty excited about today's trip. We're going to go 66 miles deep into Denali National Park. Very few private vehicles are allowed to go this far on the Park Road. Instead there is a system of buses that can haul 48 people at a time to various locations as far as 92 miles into the Park. We've opted for the 66 mile version because it is an 8 hour round trip versus a 12 hour round trip for the 92 mile version.
We didn't know quite what to expect. How long will we be allowed to linger at each stop? What will the weather be like? (The forecasts have pretty much been wrong every day). Will we have an informative driver? And so on.
We arrive at the Wilderness Access Center at 7:30AM. Pretty catchy name for a bus depot, huh? Looks like the bus will only be about half full. This is good news. Everybody gets seated and we begin to wonder if the bus is going to tip over. No one wants to sit on what will be the north side of the bus. The side away from Mt. McKinley.
Our driver’s name is Matt Payne and he assures us he has plenty of experience having just attended a 15 minute orientation session. Good! He tells jokes too. This is our bus and it reminds us a lot of the old school buses we used to ride except that the seats are marginally more comfortable.
We begin to wonder if our luck has run out and we’re not going to be able to see Mt. McKinley again. At least we’re no longer in the 70% group. Honest, the mountain is buried somewhere in these clouds.
The views along the way are postcard perfect.
They call these braided rivers/streams. It looks just like the name.
Our first wildlife of the day. Yeah, those tiny little specs are Dall Sheep.
Here we go, another group decided to be a little more cooperative so we could get some good pictures.
A view of Polychrome Valley and mountains.
Then Mt. McKinley decides to make an appearance and everyone got out to look and take pictures. WOW!
A caribou shows up.
A grizzly appears. (This is when you wish you had a better zoom)
Right after noon we arrive at the Eielson Visitor Center, the turn around point for our adventure. This particular visitor center is entirely self sufficient. Its’ water comes from a nearby creek and it’s power is generated by solar cells and a small hydroelectric plant. Eielson will close for the winter around the middle of September.
Hanging inside the center are these quilted pictures. EJ calls it quilt-art.
Ranger Dave took us for a hike and wove a story about “Little Stoney” the grizzly cub, as we walked along. He would stop and tell part of the story, leave us hanging, and we would hike for another 5 minutes or so. Then he would repeat the process. Finally just before the hike ended, he finished the story. It was a sad story as “Little Stoney” was a good bear, but ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time once too often. Careless humans leaving food lying about provided temptation “Little Stoney” could not resist. In the end, in the process of trying to save him, he ended up dying.
We only had 40 minutes from the time the bus arrived until it left for the return trip. Well, that wasn’t going to cut it. We needed more time. So we found out we could take one of the later buses back, space permitting. After a lunch and the Ranger Dave hike we were ready to return. So we put our name on the standby list. The first bus was already full, but the second bus had room for us. We were a little worried because there was a pretty big crowd standing around trying to catch a ride back to the Wilderness Access Center. But we made it.
What a Rack! On the moose, silly!
This is what happens when your zoom is too slow. It’s a red fox.
Coyote going after an Arctic Ground Squirrel. We have achieved what our driver calls the “Grand Slam”. This means you got to see caribou, moose, Dall Sheep, Mt. McKinley, and a grizzly all in the same day. Had we seen a wolf, we would have had a “Denali Finale”. But since there are only 76 wolves in a 6,000,000 acre park, our chance of seeing one was pretty slim. We tried to convince the driver that a fox and a coyote equaled a wolf, but he wouldn’t go for it.
These are called “Kettle ponds”. This area was once covered by a glacier. As the glacier receded, huge pieces would break off, and over a hundred years or so melt away. The weight of these pieces would depress the ground and form these ponds.
At last we returned to the beginning point. Fortunately, the wildlife sightings on the return trip provided some relief. But all in all, the return trip was about an hour too long according to that part of the anatomy we sit upon.
Friday was another “taking care of business” day. Laundry, the sani-dump and other stuff. Since we hadn’t a chance to access the internet for the last several days, we checked email and facebook while we did laundry. We had both computers going and had to grab an outlet and hang on to it while others were looking for places to plug in their electronic devices. Everywhere you looked there were I-Pads, I-Pods, and I-Phones plugged in. As all the campsites had no hookups, electric outlets at the camp store were at a premium.
Saturday was spent catching up on paperwork and the blog. We knocked off in the late afternoon and had a real late lunch at Morinos at the visitor center. Then along towards 9:30PM we went chasing the sunset. Unlike the evening before, this one was not as spectacular. We returned back to Big Guy and called it a day.
Sunday Frank did some maintenance on Big Guy and Elemente while EJ worked on the blog some more. Declaring that we had worked long and hard, it was time for a break. So off on another hike we go. This time to Horseshoe lake. Nice trail, but you can tell fall is already here.
We saw evidence of beavers and found their home.
Afterwards, we decided to visit “downtown” Denali one last time and catch some supper. We found a fish and chips restaurant and had halibut and fries with a salad on the side. Then we discovered there were a couple of stores we hadn’t browsed yet so we hurried off to take care of that.
We’ve heard rumors that the aurora borealis (northern lights) have put on a performance the last two nights and tonight is predicted to be clear. So we stayed up to 1:30AM in hopes of seeing them. We couldn’t see much horizon from camp because of all the trees and peaks, so we took off in the car in search of a clearer viewing area. All was to no avail, but we were amazed how much traffic there is at 2-3 in the morning. Tomorrow we are headed north toward Fairbanks so hopefully our luck will change. Cross your fingers for us!
| BG Miles Today | 0 | BG Total Miles | 7006 |
| Eat Out total $ | 941.13 | BG Total Fuel $ | 3827.34 |
| Entertainment total $ | 550.88 | Total Camping $ | 1132.91 |
| E Miles Today | 61 | E Total Miles | 2381 |
| E Total Fuel $ | 505.62 | Day # of Trip | 86 - 89 |
No comments:
Post a Comment