On Monday, June 5, our alarm rang at 4:15 AM in our Denali Park Village Lodge room. After a quick breakfast sandwich and coffee, the National Park bus picked us up for an eight-hour Denali Tundra Wilderness tour. From within this National Park tour bus (a converted school bus that brought me back to my 4th grade school bus) we were brought 62 miles into the wilderness of the park and to a lookout only 35 miles from Mount Denali (formerly known as Mt. McKinley).
Denali is the tallest mountain in North America, and towers 20,310 feet into the sky. There are two peaks to it, and they are two miles apart from each other! During June only 30% of visitors get to see the peak, due to clouds and the unique weather that this huge mountain creates all by itself. So we felt over-joyed to see it clearly at 50 miles away in the morning, and then most of it, including its top, at 35 miles away later that afternoon. It takes most climbers three weeks to complete this climb, as it is done without oxygen, and starts at 7,000 feet elevation. Days of rest are needed along the way to allow the body to get acclimated, and still only 40% of climbers make it to the top. Please enjoy this picture, which Sue took today, as you see the mountain peak above the clouds. Mt. Denali is truly inspirational.
But there is more to Denali than snow-covered mountains in every direction. The tour bus stopped every time someone saw an animal and yelled ‘stop’. We stopped a lot, and had THE best animals sightings of most buses according to our veteran tour guide. Today we saw: Moose, Ptamagan, Snowshoe Bunny Hare, Lynx, Dall Sheep, Grizzly Bear, Ram, Arctic Ground Squirrel, and Caribou. At the ranger station even the park rangers were excited to see my picture of a lynx, trotting across a ridge far away.
Here is a link to Sue’s pics from today’s tour of Denali: https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-tggJ5C
After the Tundra Tour and a visit to the National Park Visitor Center, we boarded the Denali Star Alaska Railroad for a three-hour dinner ride NORTH to Fairbanks. This sightseeing tour car we rode in is the luxurious Wilderness Express and it had large, curved-glass sight-seeing windows extending over the roof and is the deluxe mode of travel with a formal dining space and kitchen on the lower level.
We’re grateful beyond words for another fantastic day in beautiful Alaska!
