Denali National Park

Our adventure today was a 13 hour bus trip deep into Denali National Park on a converted school bus.

Not luxury transport but we had a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide and we were all encouraged to keep our eyes peeled for wildlife sightings and to shout 'STOP' when we saw something good!  This resulted in a variety of sightings..

Here is a female Caribou (reindeer) with her calf.

This female Moose was enjoying a dip..here is the long view..

One of our smaller acquaintances was this Arctic Ground Squirrel..

The most exciting was of course the Grizzly Bears.  Here a female with two yearling cubs..

These photos were taken at very long distance but it was great to see them.

Here a male and female Moose.  Those antlers!  At one of the visitor centers we had the opportunity to see how it felt to have something that size on your head..

(Heavy, I am told - and this is only half a rack!)

The reindeer antlers were pretty heavy too..

Denali National Park comprises six million acres of wilderness - accessible only by special park buses, on foot or with a permit (only issued to those on park business), it has about 100 vehicles a day on its single 93 mile gravel road.  

The views are spectacular and the road, in many places, quite treacherous - very steep drops and single track with rules as to who must give way in each section.

In the heart of the park, the terrain is Tundra, the ground only defrosting for a few months of the year.  The terrain consists of wide glacial valleys, with only relative trickles of water at this time of year.

The star attraction of the park - apart from the wildlife - is the great mountain itself, but unfortunately it did not emerge from the clouds for us today.

The best impression we had of Mount Denali today came at the visitor centre, in the form of a hand-made quilt depicting the mountain..

We had a good day - the sitting down was interspersed with lots of stops to look at wildlife, photograph the view or visit a very eco-friendly rest room! This was one of the chillier stops.