Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Denali National Park - Mt, McKinley (Denali means - the big one)

We are putting our two days at Denali National Park in one blog.
We are having amazing weather--bright, sunny, pleasantly warm and beautiful!
After we checked in yesterday, we went into the park and picked up our tour tickets for today. We then drove the 15 miles that you are allowed to drive without a special permit. As usual, we were looking for animals and eagle-eye Marilyn spied a moose just before getting off and turning around. The moose was at the stream bed. After looking around a bit at the turnaround parking lot, we could not find the moose anywhere.
We couldn't see Mt. McKinley because the clouds had come in and covered it.
We returned to our RV's and had dinner and relaxed. The campground isn't too busy as the season is slowing down and the leaves are in the beginning of changing color.
Bill and Marilyn lined up a pet walker for the time they would be gone on the tour.



look closely and you will also see Mt. McKinley


We pulled out of the RV park on Tuesday morning to get to the Denali Wilderness Access Center to catch our tour bus. We chose the 6 hour tour from the many choices that were available throughout the day. Our tour was a 106 mile round trip on paved bumpy road and the rest was on a NARROW graded gravel very high passageway. Early on, we were able to view Mt. McKinley and we stopped several times to get photos before the mountain clouded over. We did see 7 grizzly bears, one of which was chasing a caribou. He didn't catch it, but he continued wandering around. We were worried about 2 hikers, who were not too far off becoming his meal! Besides the bears we saw 6 caribou feeding in the big open fields. Part of the bumpy roads were due to culvert re-construction. We bounced over 114 new culverts and that was only one way!



Ice cream was the treat for the day after the tour followed by a bowl of hot chicken chili. All in all it was one great day!
Leigh - Marilyn
Posted from my iPad

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