Early call today — breakfast at 6AM! The plan — a bus tour Denali National Park and Preserve — which are timed and fill up quickly. The park entrance is about 30 minutes away, so we joined the many visitors and waited for our converted school bus to load up. Destination: the Eielson Visitor Center, 66 miles in on the only road in the park
Denali is over 6.0 million acres, larger than the state of New Hampshire, and to protect the wild nature of the park, there’s limited access for private vehicles. So the Park runs various sightseeing buses to different locations, such as hiking trails and campsites. Originally named Mount McKinely National Park, it was enlarged from 2 to 6 million acres by Jimmy Carter in 1980, when the name oft he park changed to Denali. The icy granite massif, now called Denali, which in the Athabaskan language means “the high one”, wasn’t changed until 2015, when it was ordered to be changed by President Obama.
The park shuts down in September, when the cold and snow set in. The busses stop running and all movement throughout the park is done by sled dog teams. So it’s during the short summer months that thousands of visitors come to see the incredible landscapes, and hopefully spot some wildlife.
Our driver, Tina, was very informative, and provided some historical stories and descriptions of flora and fauna, and was the expert spotter of wildlife. She called it a “good bear day” as we came across about a dozen — some grizzlies, which are blond, some mamas and her cubs, a brown bear ambling the road in front of us, some caribou (I saw Dasher, Dancer and Comet out on the left side of the bus). They wildlife was way out in the distance, so those with really wide angle lenses were fortunate to get some wonderful photos. Denali mountain didn’t appear from beneath it’s cloud cover, but we did see part of the Alaska range, and other astounding vistas. And the white spruce trees — which appear in the distance like perfectly formed Christmas trees were beautifully offset by some kodachrome-like rock formations in some areas. (The black spruce as the spindly less pretty trees — the permafrost makes for shallow roots and they don’t fare as well in the alpine environment.
It rained most of the day, and was cloudy for all of it, but when we spotted something interesting we stopped to observe for awhile, and once we opened the windows we had pretty good views. It was a long day on the bus, and so we headed to a brew pub for dinner — 49th State Brewery.
Tomorrow is our last day of hiking — and the longest, and with a late start we will enjoy the wilderness and quiet beginning in the late morning.
