June 16th, 17th, & 18th

June 18 - Denali National Park
Denali NP is made up of 6 million acres, and has one park road to travel. On that road you can only go by private car for the first 15 miles, then travel is restricted to park shuttle buses only. We purchased a ticket to go out to Wonder Lake, 85 miles away (the second to the last stop). It was an 11 hour trip and the bummer was it was cloudy, foggy or rainy the entire day. Fortunately, we were able to get some pictures of the animals throughout the park. We saw snowshoe hares, a red fox, caribou, moose, and bears, however, not as many as we would like. Our third attempt to see Mt. McKinley failed.


June 17 - Denali - Part I
Today we came to Denali NP in search of the elusive Mt. McKinley. Not going to happen today, so we bought a park shuttle bus pass for tomorrow and decided to take the Jeep up to the Stampede Trail. The "road" was only about 30 miles long, so we thought we should check out the animals and trail as a late afternoon activity. After about nine miles of some intense jeeping...it was time to turn around. The Stampede Trail was the original gold mining trail that Chris McCandless wound up starving to death in an abandoned bus. His story was the basis for the book and then later movie. "Into the Wild." We could see why he never made it to safety. Yikes!


June 16 - Byers Lake
When we were campground scouting yesterday, we met a retired couple and were they ever fun and full of knowledge. Bill and Carolyn came to Alaska from the East coast twenty nine years ago and never left. Bill was a military veteran and told us that we needed to stop by the Veteran's Memorial at milepost 147 on the Parks Highway. There we would find a statue that points out Mt. McKinley, otherwise known as Denali (High One).
It was sunny, but high clouds blocked the majority of the 20,320 foot mountain. Attached to the memorial was Denali State Park and a campground called Byers Lake. Perfect, we would stay there and hike in the evening, since it never gets really dark. So, about six o'clock we headed out to the 6 mile trail in hopes of better views of the mountain and to see some wild life. We figured there would be a lot of activity. Oh...there was activity...the constant battle to keep the mosquitoes off of us was nearly impossible and did I mention the rains came too. So, obviously there was no viewing of the mountain, but we did get to see beavers (see video) and a porcupine (up close)