The Great One!

We left Fairbanks on a clear day and headed on down Parks Highway. We caught our first glimpse of Mt. McKinley aka Denali. Wow! Even from a distance (or maybe more so) you get a real feel for size of the largest mountain in the North American continent. Even has Everest topped for the vertical rise since this area is closer to sea level. It magically disappeared the closer we got to the park itself. The odds are against visitors on a time line of being able to actually see the peaks. It is so large it has its own weather system and is often socked in with clouds. We felt fortunate that we saw it at all.
First stop along the way was the little town of Nenana famous for their “Ice Classic”. The town has a contest every spring with a large money prize going to the person who correctly predicts when the ice breaks on the Tanana River. Those Alaskans sure know how to have fun! We stopped for lunch at a little local café. Guess what they had on the menu? Green chile cheeseburgers! Yup – the owners were from New Mexico.
The drive from Fairbanks to Denali National Park was an easy drive. We stayed at McKinley RV Park in Healy which is about ten miles from the park. It could use a little sprucing up but the wifi was great! It was the best of the RV parks choices. We did check out the camp grounds in Denali NP and we could have fit in the larger sites. However, it would have been dry camping but much more scenic. Ya just never know which way to go sometimes. I have decided Trailer Life definitely has a prejudice against NP and State parks –they almost always say no slides even when we could fit. Beware even pictures of RV parks on the web can be very deceptive.

We took our first drive through Denali that night and booked our bus ticket for the next day. No private vehicles are allowed after mile 13. You have your choices between commercial tours or the parks own bus system. We opted for the park service for two reasons. First you could get on and off the bus at multiple points and catch another bus and second it was quite bit cheaper. You do need to bring your own food and water as there are no concessions in park itself past the 13 mile marker. They said the ride would be about an eight hour round trip to the Eielson Center and thirteen to Wonder Lake. We decided not to do Wonder Lake for time constraints with leaving the dogs alone. We made the right choice, even eight hours made for a long day. Even the caribou needed a nap.
We had another great day for seeing Denali but as the day wore on so did the clouds. Still the ride was spectacular. We also got to see the Dall sheep, bears, caribou and a fox. Can you spot the bear in the picture? The animals are quite familiar with seeing the buses and often get close to the road.

The next day Jack and I took hike and got to see some of the smaller animals and the tundra flowers. We saw arctic squirrels, a marmot and ptarmigans.
Later in the day we took in the dog sled presentation in the park. We got to meet and greet with the stars of the show, the Alaskan Huskies. They are not an official breed but they are the breed to be working dogs and able to go long distances pulling heavy loads. They seemed to be quite bored with all us tourist but really perked up when the handlers were picking the ones that would show us how it was done pulling a sled. Beautiful and amazing animals.
I have a lot of pictures and it was hard for me to pick which ones to show on the blog so do take the time to look at the full album linked on the picture below. Also check out the interactive map of Mt.McKinley on the park link. I will be talking about the flight we took over the glaciers in my next post. The next day the rain moved in and stayed for the next three days as we headed south to Talkeetna.

From Denali