Denali

This was taken the second day and the smoke was cleared last night by high winds. We could only drive 15 miles vs the 55 mile bus trip yesterday. This is a better picture of Mount McKinley taken from 70 miles away but still some haze. Again fortunate to get this picture as the clouds moved in a few minutes later.

A view of the railroad north of Denali

Your driving options in Denali are limited to just a few miles at the park entrance. While hiking and bicycles are OK we choose the bus option. This helps protect the animals plus Joe Public would be clueless on how to drive on the one lane mountain gravel road.

We had a nice day - filtered sun and no rain. The following picture shows a wide section of the road. 

Now you might think this is a poor picture of Denali. But there are few days in the summer when the mountains is actually visible. We were extremely lucky to get this picture. Mount McKinley is 32 miles away.

The 110 mile bus trip took 8 hours.

This has not been a good time for viewing animals in Denali. A late spring and a lot of rain are contributing. Plus the animals don't run up to the bus to get food which is strictly forbidden. If you do the normal tourist thing like call the animals then the bus driver is required to immediately move the bus at least 1/2 mile. But this red fox decided to stroll down the road.

And these 3 bears were having a great time in the bush. The driver did his best to wait for a closer encounter but they romped off into the bush.

On the trip to the 55 mile turnaround I commented that we saw more buses than animals. All eyes are looking for animals and you yell out "Stop" if you see something moving be it rock or animal! We did see:
3 squirrels, 2 sets of 3 bears, about 12 caribou, a eagle, a rare hare (snowshoe?), a few birds and we were very lucky to see 5 Dall sheep. Most were to far away to take pictures.