August 8-10 Denali National Park

I had one more day of comp travel time to burn up before my last day which is coming up next week. So I took off on Friday and headed to Denali National Park and stayed at my former boss Bill's hostel, Denali Mountain Morning Hostel in Carlo Creek, which is 12 miles from the park entrance. Friday was raining and on the way to the hostel I saw a black bear walking across a field, I stopped to take a pic and he heard my car hit the bump strip and he started booking it back to the edge of the field. He got to the edge and he stood up to look at my car. It was so neat but of course my big camera was in my trunk! so no pic of that!

When I got to the park I checked the wilderness access center and got the last shuttle ticket for Kantishna which is the farthest you can go into the park on the road system. Its a 90 mile bus ride that lasts 12 hours. But I would have the option to get on and off the bus if I wanted to.

On Saturday I had to be at the park for my shuttle bus ride into the park at 7:30am to get in line for a good seat. The trick with the bus ride is to be seated on the left for the ride out as that is the side that gets the views down into the valleys...and hope for an empty seat on the right for the ride back.

Here's some of the photos I took during the bus ride.

A view of the park road



here's a vid of what some of the bus ride is like


Mountain goats were some of the first animals we saw


the shuttle bus... a green blue bird
this sign is famous for bears rubbing up against it. there are nails all at the bottom to discourage the bears from using it as a rubbing post. ..they don't work.

One of the first bears of the day.. .there were two more grazing nearby


these caribou are my find...we were driving along and i glimpsed them walking along the creek bed...the bus driver had to back up for us to see them


in the morning the park was covered in snow in the higher elevations..by the afternoon the snow was gone and and the sun was out...it seemed like a different park almost



here's a pic of a arctic squirrel that was hanging around the Eilson visitor center, which by the way is trying to get a LEEDS certification for energy, environment and re-use design


I don't know if it was the same squirrel or not but here's a vid of a scamp that was getting into trouble on the bus...the squirrels around the visitor's center are cheeky bold critters!


this is a beaver lodge that is built around a spruce tree


Beaver


this campground is the last public camping in the park at mile 85 of the park road


not Mt. McKinley but still beautiful

a golden eagle was flying the ridgeline and i got this shot


On a break at Eilson on the return trip I started walking along the road to get some shots and the arctic squirrel above was reacting to something other than me... see below for what it was...








a fox had gotten an arctic squirrel....he walked right in front of me and didn't even give me a second or even a first look...he just trotted along like he was king of the hill with his prize firmly in his mouth


after the bus picked me up, the next wildlife siting was this bear that was digging out an arctic squirrel burrow....btw.. he got it


here's another bear we saw shortly after the digging bear...she is nursing her cub

snacktime over!

The day was amazing! and after we rolled back into the entrance of the park, I booked it on back to the hostel to change for the band we were all going to see at the Salmon Bake resturant.
We saw the Denali Cooks who were a band back in the 90's that began in the Denali area. They were awesome! On Sunday, I got up late due to not going to sleep until 3am. I took my sweet time getting home and got to bed early so I could be prepared to present my work to the Rural Cap staff at the meeting on Monday morning.