This page NEW on Labor Day, 2003
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After a couple of nights of roughing it at Chugash, we headed a couple hundred miles north to the Denali National Park area and stayed in the nice, and unique, Denali Dome Home. Yes that is a real, live Scotty dog sitting with Wai:
Bright and early, we went to check out the working sled dog kennels at Denali. The rangers actually use sled dogs in the winter instead of noisy snowmobiles to do winter patrols:
At noon, we hopped on an 8-hour roundtrip shuttle/tour bus to the Eisleson Visitor Center, 66-miles in on the park road.
Denali National Park is HUGE. HUGE!!! HUGGEEEEEE! There is ONE 90-mile-long road into the HUGE park. Cars are only allowed for the 1st 15 miles. Otherwise, you have to take the shuttle/tour bus. In some ways this is a pain. But it is obvious that it helps preserve the park and the pristine, natural, crowd-free, smog-free experience. This vista from the Polychrome Overlook sums up the vastness and beauty of the place:
The Teklanika river. A 'braided' river that always looks something like this, and never flows as one single strand:
We saw caribou, a grizzly, and a wolf on the 1st day:
Lisa & Carl at the Polychrome Overlook, and Mt. McKinley (North America's tallest mountain, >20,000 feet):
On the 2nd day, Dave, Linda, and Wai took the shuttle partway into the park and got dropped off at Savage/Tatler Creek (just before Sable Pass). There are no (official) hiking trails in Denali, so you are supposed to just go hiking around on the tundra, taking pictures and avoiding bears. We had to tundra-whack thru some pretty serious stuff near the end of our loop hike (last pic):
We saw some more animals today. Grizzly with two cubs. Dall sheep. :
And we got to see a moose and a grizzly VERY VERY close up! Very cool!:
