Tag: Denali

23-24 July Denali National Park

23-24 July. Denali National Park.

We took the standard photo in front of the sign!

We spent two days in Denali National Park.  6 million acres (about 100 square miles) but you can only drive in 15 miles on a single road.  You can walk the whole thing if you want (not us) or you can take a bus ride in for up to 80 miles.

We opted for the bus ride, and because we didn’t know any better, bought the ticket to go the full 80 miles into the park.

This was the bus we got to ride on into Denali National Park

Now the cool thing about this bus ride is, that you can get on or off wherever you want.  You just yell stop, and then you can get off and go for a hike. Then, when you are ready to continue on the bus, you just find the road, and try and wave a bus down.  If he has room, he will pick you back up, and off you go.  The bad thing about the bus ride is, that it takes 12 hours to go from the bus terminal to the end of the road and back.  After about 4 hours, we knew that we did not want to do another 8, so we got off the bus and caught another bus going 4 hours back.  Still, a very long day to be riding in the bus, and we did not get a hike in!

We did see some cool animals, however.  Factoid: According to our bus driver there are 39 species of mammals in the park, nearly 200 bird species, and NO reptiles: NO lizards, NO Snakes.

Whenever someone sees an animal – they yell STOP and the bus driver stops the bus so we can take photos.

These are Ptarmigan. The state bird of Alaska

The highlight of today were all the Grizzly Bear we saw. We actually caught a glimpse of 4 sets of moms with cubs, I got decent photos of two sets.

Grizzly bear and two little cubs
Grizzly bear and bigger cub
Grizzly Bear and two bigger cubs
Grizzly Cub

We did turn around at a nice viewpoint.

Do we look worn out? Halfway through the bus ride

The next day, we did get a few hikes in.  And on one of those hikes we found some moose!

Moose on Horseshoe Lake

Can you tell that my camera is acting up?  At the end of the day we stopped at a camera shop – they said they couldn’t fix it and sold us a new one… Good thing there was a camera store or this blog would be very verbose for the next five weeks!

Two fun photos:

Saw this truck using piece of old snowmobile tracks for mud guards!
The banks of the river are so steep, they pull the rafts way, way up to the upper banks.

22 July 2018. Road to Denali

22 July 2018, Road to Denali.

We had about 150 miles to go today, to get from Talkeetna to Denali National Park (with a little side trip down Petersville Road).  It was such a beautiful day, and we kept getting gorgeous views of Denali – so that’s what I’m putting in the blog today.

Denali from Petersville Road
Denali – again from Petersville road
Denali – from Petersville Road
Denali with Mt Foraker on the left (sometimes called “Denali’s wife”)
Denali from Petersville Road
Denali from along the Parks Highway
Denali from along the Parks Highway
Denali from along the Parks Highway
Denali from along the Parks Hiqhway
Denali from Denali State Park
Not Denali – I think Mt Huntingon
Not Denali – but pretty
Not Denali – but every time the road turned, a new mountain rose out in front of us!
Not Denali
This is Denali looking back from the North
This is Denali looking back from the North – still on the Parks Hiqhway

Tomorrow we go into the Denali National Park.

20 July 2018. Talkeetna

20 July 2018. Flightseeing!

This is certainly one of the big highlights of our trip!  We booked a flightseeing tour to see Denali up close.  We scored big, because most days these mountains are blanketed in clouds.  We got up early to wonderful blue skies, and the views were breathtaking!  Denali is the highest mountain in North America, at over 20,000 ft. The size of these mountains was very hard to comprehend, there was nothing to compare them to for scale. They were just magnificent.  The pilot gave us stories of many of the mountains and glaciers that we saw, but I don’t remember any of the other names.

We chose Talkeetna Air Taxi for our flight – great people – great pilot – would definitely recommend this company!
We got to wear headphones to protect our ears and to listen to the narration from the pilot
This plane seated 10 passengers – every seat was both aisle and window
Denali is part of the Alaskan Range
Glacier – there were several glaciers in these mountains
Not Denali – other mountains in the Alaskan Range
you can see the ice flows and glaciers between the mountains
Denali!
Not Denali
Glacier- both the white and dirt colored areas (Moraine) are all snow glacier.  The glaciers just bring the dirt down from the mountains as they flow.  This is actually the confluence of two glaciers flowing together.
Denali on left
Here you see the two main peaks on Denali -one at 20,000ft, the other at 19,000 ft. The two peaks are 3 miles apart
Denali!
Not Denali
Not Denali – look at the evidence of avalanches
Denali
Glacier
Not Denali
Not Denali
There were lakes of blue on top of some of the glaciers
Not Denali
Ice flows

We chose the trip that let us land the plane on a glacier, so we got out and walked in the snow and ice

Chuck and Karen with the airplane on the glacier
Chuck on the glacier – Denali in upper left corner.  We landed at about 5600 feet.
Chuck and plane on the glacier

Chuck took a short video of the plane taking off again from the glacier

This was the path our GPS tracked for us flying around Denali.  You can see where the pilot maneuvered so that people on both sides of the plane could see the cool stuff
Our Denali view from where we landed on the glacier

We hope to get some more shots of these mountains as we explore the Denali National Park next week.