Denali National Park - Simply Stunning

Stan . . .

It's simply hard to put into words and pictures what I saw and felt when I ventured into Denali National Park.  The park consists of 6.2 million acres and there is only one road into the park.  The first 15 miles of the road are paved and anyone can travel this stretch of the road, after that the remaining 65 or so  miles of gravel road are restricted and can only be traveled by buses provided by Denali National Park.

There is a campground with no facilities about 29 miles inside the park (14 miles further in from the end of the paved portion) that can be used by permit only.  You have to commit to staying a minimum of 3 days at this campground and must park your RV in the campground and then use the shuttle buses that pass the campground every 30 minutes or so if you wish to travel further into the park.  We chose to stay at a campground outside the National Park and traveled to the Wilderness Access Center (bus terminal) to begin our daily 8 hour excursions into the park.  We spent 3 full days in the Denali area and took the shuttle bus trips twice into the park to the Eielson Visitor Center that is at milepost 67 of the road.

The vastness and scenery within the park are simply stunning and overwhelming, but I will try to offer a sampling of what we saw and experienced in the following pictures--we have enjoyed everything we have done on this Alaska adventure, but the Denali experience definitely stands at the top of our list ! ! !

Mount McKinley (also referred to as Denali) is the highest mountain in North America at 20,320 ft. and is the symbol of all that is Denali National Park.  The mountain is usually hidden in the clouds and can normally only be seen about 25% of the time.  On our first trip into the park we were not able to see the mountain because of the clouds, but on our second trip we got our first glimpse while still 80 miles away from Mt. McKinley in the below picture.  Simply awesome----

We were able to get our next good view of the mountain from about 45 miles away, but the clouds were beginning to hide parts of the mountain.

Our closest point to view Mt. McKinley was at the Eielson Visitor Center which was still about 30 miles from the mountain, and by the time we got there the clouds were blocking our view of the lower portions of the mountain, but the peak was still visible.

We also were able to see lots of wildlife during our bus trips, some were only visible via binoculars, while others were close enough to be able to get some good camera pictures.  We saw moose, caribou, grizzly bear, Dall sheep, wolves and many ground squirrels.  The below pictures are simply a sampling of what we were able to photograph.

The above two pictures are of a mother grizzly and her 2 cubs (one dark colored, one tan).

Caribou are probably the easiest to see of all the wildlife living within Denali.  They like to roam in the river bottoms and out in the open brush country.  The below two pictures are a good representation of the caribou that we saw during our bus trips.

The Dall sheep in the next few pictures were fun to watch as they climbed and traversed areas that other wildlife find impossible to access.

Typically the hardest to spot in the park are the wolves and this was true for us.  The wolves were the last of the major wildlife (moose, caribou, bear, Dall sheep & wolves) we spotted on our two trips into the park.  Below is the best picture we were able to get of the wolves (mama and 2 pups).