Alaska- Parks Highway - Denali

June 25 Monday Drove to Denali today. We decided to stop on the way at the North View which is at Denali State park. Gary & I had spent a night here on the way to Anchorage to pickup the boys. We had such beautiful weather that night and were able to take pictures of Mt. McKinley. However, this day was so overcast you could barely see the mountains. Made us realize how lucky we had been to see it the night we were here. And, so glad the boys had seen in on the plane tour.

We stopped at the visitor's center at Denali National Park to look over their displays and see if any ranger programs were being conducted. Luckily, we made it just in time to catch the last sled dog demonstration of the day. These are working sled dogs, not the racing ones. These dogs are in the park all winter working the rangers patrolling the park when it is full of snow. It was a short demo, but very informative and we were able to interact with some of the dogs at the end. Most were just out in the open and we could pet them. There were also some puppies but they were in a fenced area with the mother and weren't quite as accessible. 

 

We looked around the gift shop area which is outside of the park. There are many shops, condos, tour buses, etc. right on the Parks Highway just a ½ mile or so from the entrance to the park, It was very commercialized and we all felt that it was a very unnatural setting in the otherwise natural beauty of the area.

We decided to make this a short day and headed back to the RV.

Alaska – Denali Day Two

Removing a rock on the road before our bus passes

June 26 Tuesday Rainy day, but we had a bus tour of Denali scheduled for 9am. This is supposed to be a great chance to see a lot of the wildlife in the park. You ride on old buses 66 miles into the park. In your own private vehicle you can only go in 13 miles. We kept hoping the rain would stop and the skies would clear....no such luck! This is an 8 hour round trip ( 4 in, 4 out) on a dirt road similar to an Andes mountain pass. Our bus windows kept getting all muddy; we could barely see out. We had about 3 or 4 scheduled bathroom stops on the way in and the way out and each time our bus driver would clean the windows as best he could with a squeegee, but as soon as we started driving again it would cloud over. 

The boys making the best of the trip!

Mama and babies

We began to think we would never see any wildlife, but, finally about 3 ½ hours in we did see a mama grizzly and her two cubs! And, it was on our side of the bus!! She was leading her cubs down a path to cross a bridge right behind the bus so we got some good pictures. When we finally got to the Eileson Visitor Center – the end of the ride in, there was also another grizzly bear. But, that was it...a very long, disappointing day. If the weather had been nice I'm sure it would have been a completely different experience. It would have been possible to get off the bus, do some hiking and catch a different bus back, but the rain was miserable. At one point, it was even snowing! The boys did manage to quickly climb a hill at one stop though. They were such good sports.  

Still smiling!

At the end of the ride, we all were hungry and so we headed to the 49^th State Brewery, a restaurant Gary and I had visited when we were at Denali before the boys came. We all enjoyed a good dinner and had a good laugh over our ordeal of the day!