Into Denali National Park

Saturday, May 15, 2010
Today was a bus trip through Denali National Park. It's quite cloudy today and again we won't get to see Mt. McKinley. I'm beginning to think that the mountain and native-born, non-tribal Alaskans are really figments of the imagination; they don't really exist. Seems most people up here come for the tourist season from the lower 48, then return home to Michigan, Iowa, Oregon, Colorado, etc for the winter. Today our bus driver/guide's name is River White (his parents were free spirits in the 60's). He's been doing this summer gig for 22 years and was a great guide, but we didn't have much luck spotting many animals. Those we did see were so far away, it was like they were specks in the fields. The bus was equipped with drop down screens in several of the seats, and River had use of a fabulous camera, which he zoomed in and displayed on the screens in the bus. Seemed like we were watching a good National Geographic documentary, but we can do that at home for a lot less money, right?? Here are a few shots - but we zoomed WAY in and cropped the pictures so we could actually get an image worth looking at.





Our bus tour was a shortened version of the Tundra Wilderness Tour. There are only a few places where buses can turn around, and because we were traveling so early in the season, we went only 30 miles into the park. The next turn-around after that 30 mile mark is usually snow covered this time of year, so there is no traffic allowed past this point. You return on the same road you went in, but you don't really notice that too much, because the sighting of animals is ever changing and exciting. I was disappointed in this trip, because my expectations were unrealistic. I really expected it to be like Yellowstone, with herds of animals crowding the roads, oblivious to the tourists. Wasn't like that at all for us. We saw a lot of snowshoe hares and willow ptarmigans (Alaska's state bird) but not much to get excited about. Again, it's early in the season and maybe the animals weren't moving too much.





When we returned to the resort, we stopped by the HAL excursion office and Don booked a tour on a small plane to fly to Mt McKinley tomorrow, then headed to our room took a little nap to re-energize ourselves for the next activity: Black Diamond Covered Wagon Dinner. We were picked up by a bus at the resort and taken to the Black Diamond complex. Our group was a bit small, and we were divided between two covered wagons, each pulled by two draft horses, given lots of blankets because it was rather cold, and we began the 30-40 minute ride to the cabin in which they serve the dinner. Some other people joined the group via ATVs.



The grilled food was just ok - nothing exceptional. The quality of the food definitely wasn't as good as last night's dinner at Cabin Nite. Our trip through the forest might have been more enjoyable if we hadn't had to listen to our trail guide, Kevin, babble about himself during the entire trip out and back. The price was $89 per adult, and we felt was overpriced by at least twenty bucks.