Alaska Tourists - Part 10

July 6th was the day we had reserved to take a 12 hour shuttle bus trip to the end of the Denali Park road.  We got up early and I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast.  We had plenty of snacks packed including summer sausage, cheeses, ritz crackers, snickers, licorice, big hunks, Sweet and salty M&M snack (not so good), carrots and a few other things.

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7:45 and we wanted to be first in line to get a good seat.  We got to the WAC (wilderness access center about 6:45 and immediately went out to wait for them to start lining up for our bus.  Hurray - we were first in line.  I told Suzy and Morris to sit in the first row on the passenger side behind the bus.

The next 3 people in line were from Washington and Australia.  Instead of sitting in the first seat behind the bus driver as planned, I let them have that seat and I sat behind Suzy and Morris.  My offer of the seat was a bit selfish though as I had seen that the inside seat behind the driver was going to be blocked by the drivers big high seat back and I didn't want to be blocked in.

Our driver gave us her speech and we started on our drive through the park.  As we approached the viewpoint where we can drive to, we could see that the mountain was out and it was gorgeous.  To my total  dismay, the driver kind of said, "there's your mountain" and kept on driving on up the road continuing her monologue of "I did this" and "I've done that".  I quickly grabbed a couple of pictures through the windshield which did not turn out so I was really disheartened.  In previous trips to the park, we had seen where the mountain was out one minute and a few minutes later was totally hidden behind clouds.

Fortunately, the mountain was still out when we got to where the bus driver decided to stop and let us take pictures.   The top of the mountain was in it's cloud but the bottom was in view.

We drove on to our first rest stop where someone had piled a few rocks.  Suzy added one rock to each of these towers, then started her own on a third rock nearby.

Further up the road, the bottom of the mountain was still out.

One of the passengers on the bus spotted this nice caribou.

We stopped at the Polychrome viewpoint to take a few pictures.

Suzy wanted me to grab the mountain but it was a little big to fit in my hand.

According to our bus driver, the caribou above are standing very still because they think if they do that, the mosquitoes won't "see" them.  We drove further on up the road, we saw 2 bears and a few more caribou.  We also saw some birds.

I think Suzy wants to be a moose - she kept picking up antlers.  Or maybe she just wants to show her kids how big of an antler she wants.  They were big and heavy.   I definitely would not want to have to carry them around on my head all day.

They had both caribou and moose antlers sitting on a bench for us to check out.

The caribou we saw were still rather rough as they haven't shed all their winter fur yet.

Another stop at the viewpoint where a lot of pictures of Denali are taken - showing the road up to the park.  The wind was blowing and moving clouds in so we weren't sure how much longer the mountain would be in view.

We arrived at the Eilson Center and stopped for a 20 minute break.  Long enough to get a few pictures of a rapidly disappearing mountain:

two interlocked moose antlers from a moose duel in 2003:

And a gorgeous 4 panel quilt that parks services had commissioned a local woman to make.  It is so absolutely gorgeous.

Once again, it was time to get on the bus and drive to the end of the road at Kantishna.

Mid-center of the picture above, there is a nest that contains at least 2 baby birds.  Mama bird was there to feed them at the time we arrived.

In the park there are many kettle lakes - lakes created when the glaciers receded.  The one above is encircled by cotton grass.

As we neared Kantishna and the end of the road, we saw a large bull moose in one of the kettle lakes.  We watched him for quite a while...

Then we noticed a cow moose near the other end of the lake and soon her yearling calf emerged from the trees to join her in the water.

Infortunately, the water was kind of deep for the yearling so she slipped as she got close to mom and decided she needed to move to shallower water.

We watched the moose for 15-20 minutes and then drove on up to the end of the road.

Hurray - Suzy survived to the end.  But no rest for the weary as now, it was time to turn around and head the 92.6 miles back to the WAC.

An hour later when we got back to the kettle lake, the moose were all still there eating.  We watched them for another 10 minutes or so and finally the bull moose decided it was time to head for the trees and our driver started up the bus.

As we drove back toward Eilson, we saw the last bit of Denali poking out above the clouds.  That would be our last look at Denali on this trip.

Since we were behind schedule, we stopped at the Eilson Center only long enough to fill our water bottles and take advantage of the indoor plumbing then our trip continued on.

As we were driving along, the driver suddenly stopped.  She wouldn't tell us why until she confirmed her suspicions but then pointed a bear out to us.  The bear had gone behind a bush so we waited to see if it would reappear.  Finally it did.

It came out from the bush and continued eating.  The diet of the bears in the park consist mostly of the vegetation.  However, while we were watching the bear, a bull moose appeared about 200 yards from him.

We watched to see if there would be any confrontation but the moose quickly disappeared and as the bear continued eating, we could see that he had picked up the smell of the moose and was trying to determine where it was.

We drove on past Polychrome which looked even more beautiful in the late afternoon.

We stopped a  number of times to look for sheep.  We saw more bears including a mother bear and her 2 cubs.  They were too far away for a picture but we could see them as the walked around a bit and then mama gathered them close to her to nurse.  A short ways away, there were another 2 bear.

We saw more caribou on the way out but we didn't stop for more pictures.

We did stop here to let a guy off.  I was amazed by the trunk on the tree above as it was extremely crooked.  Suzy mentioned it to the bus driver but she had nothing to say.  Instead, she backed the bus up to look at the creek while we waited.

We stopped just after we crossed the Savage River bridge to check out a huge caribou that was eating down there.  Our bus driver said that frequently there are 3 bull caribou that hang out there.

And we stopped by a pond to watch one more cow moose for a few minutes.  Then we traveled on to the WAC, picked up my truck and went to the Denali Salmon Bake for dinner.  I had a blackened halibut burrito which was quite good even though it had very little halibut and was mostly rice and beans.

Saturday morning, July 7th, we got up and packed.  We decided on just granola bars for breakfast.  As we were leaving the Carlo Creek area, I stopped to take a picture of Cabin T - I love the trees on the roof but wonder how long they will let them grow before they do damage to the roof.

We decided to drive out the park road to see if by chance Denali was out but no luck.  We drove all the way to Savage River ...

then turned around and headed for home.

When we got to Nenana we stopped long enough to visit an old church there to check out the alter cloth.

It is made of leather and was beaded by an Athebascan - definitely a lot of work went into this.  I've got to get me some seed beads and try out this beading.

Time to head on home to see what John has been up to while we've been out playing tourist.