Denali- to the end of the road

Three and a half days at Denali is almost over as I write this, but it has been an amazing 3 ½ days. I'm running out of words – amazing, fantastic, fabulous, incredible – they are all true and accurate, but they don't begin to really describe Denali. I can only think of one word that does it, that goes beyond the usual, and that's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! (And my word processor didn't even try to correct that one -- -do you suppose I got it right?!!) Except for the mosquitos and the heat – but that is another story…

The first day here, I went exploring myself – out the park road as far as private cars are allowed to go, and watched caribou grazing in the river. I explored the visitor center, watched a couple of films (both worth watching) and walked around a little bit. One of the events is a sled dog demonstration since Denali has a working sled dog kennel, but I kept missing my connections for that one, so postponed it to another day.

Day 2 was the bus trip to the end of the road – Kantishna.  You may be imagining a lovely bus with cushioned seats and air conditioning, but put those pictures out of your mind. Think instead of an old school bus, no AC, seats big enough for two elementary school kids, and now you have a better idea. Some people had to sit two in those seats – two good-sized adults. I had a seat to myself for most of the trip, for which I am very thankful.

Our goals for the day were to see wildlife, and the mountain. It is "out" only about 30 percent of the days in the summer, so only about 30% of the visitors get to see it. I got to see it 3 days in a row – quite amazing! First up, though, was a fairly rare sighting of a lynx. If you look at the center right section of the photo (after you click on it to make it bigger) you'll see it. None of my pictures were really good, but these were the best. I don't know how many visitors get to see a lynx, but I know it's not very many.  

 Soon we were in an area where bears are frequently sighted. We saw four of them – a mama and two cubs, whose picture I didn't get, and a lone one seen here. Frankly, the ones I saw on the Alcan between Fort Nelson and Whitehorse were much closer and much more visible, but still, seeing them in Denali was a treat. 

There are lots of Dall sheep in the park, and we found quite a few. With my long lens, I was able to get this photo – they were really far away, so I'm pretty pleased with these results. 

About 53 miles into the park, there is another visitor center, Eilson Center, where the mountain shows itself in its full glory. The exclamations as we came around a corner and there it was were quite heartfelt. We were all very impressed!  

 

so much wind I had to take my hat off, and my hair was a mess!

 In the visitor center is a quilt made by quilt artist Ree Nancarrrow. I met her 20 years ago when I taught in Fairbanks, and she has done amazing work – not the kind of stuff I was teaching!  But isn't that a beauty.  What fun to see a quilt in the middle of nowhere!

As we continued on, we came to Mirror Lake and reflection pond, places where many McKinley photos are taken, but conditions were not the perfect still pond that allowed us amateurs to get that kind of photo – but some of us took one anyway!  On the way back, we stopped again at Mirror lake and some of us went wading, me included, but I'm not in this photo.  It was fun to go in the water, very cold, but fun!

The end of the road is the old mining camp of Kantishna. There's not much mining any more, and not much evidence of it either, but the land has been bought up by several lodges and they have guests come out there to spend several days at a time. Can you imagine riding 6 or 7 hours on a school bus to get to your vacation?  Yeow….  But it truly is the end of the road through the park. 

We didn't see many caribou until we were on the way back – this one (center of the photo, more visible when you click on the picture)was the best of the bunch. 

I'll leave you with my favorite mountain picture… and just say that by the time we got home – after 8 PM—I was too tired to do much but get some dinner and go to bed. I figured I'd blog another day!