Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Denali National Park

Denali National Park and Preserve was established in 1917 as a place to protect wild animals and the place where they live. It has since been enlarged to six million acres and includes Denali, the mountain formerly known as Mt. McKinley.


There is only one road into the park and only the first 15 miles of the road is accessible to private vehicles.

We took the Wilderness Tundra Tour into the park which goes about 60 miles into the park and takes about 7 hours.


On our tour we saw tons of Caribou and Dall Sheep, a ptarmigan and four grizzly bears. The three in the top photo are a mother and two nearly three year old cubs. Two very large three year old cubs. In Denali the grizzly cubs stay with their mom for the first 3 years because the summer season is so short.


We would highly recommend doing this tour if you are in the Park. The driver looks for wildlife and stops when you see something and if the animal is far away they have cameras with monitors so that you can see them better. And they also provided a box of tasty snacks!

We also spent a day hiking on several of the trails in the park that were very nice too. 


On the Mountain Vista tour we got to see the rarely seen peak of Denali!

The Savage River trail and Horseshoe Lake trail are very cool too.
We saw Moose also. We see Moose all the time. We can barely keep track of all the Moose.
We are done with Denali and will be heading off in the morning to places unknown... but somewhere south of here. Happy Summer Solstice from the Land of the Midnight Sun!




 

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