Denali Continued

Myrna and Barbara left early this morning to catch busses to take in the full Denali experience by travelling between 60 and 90 miles into the park, where automobiles are not allowed.  These bus tours take up to 12 hours to complete and they expect to be back in camp by 2100 this evening.  

It will be our last full day in the park so we took a drive this morning, heading towards the West Entrance.  We made it to the village just outside of the park and decided to turn back.  It was another 50+ miles to the nearest town and we are going to travel that in the morning.  Cathy and Linda at the entrance:

After this obligatory photo, we continued back into the park.  We stopped and watched a large female moose up in the bushes.  After a few minutes, it got anxious and ran past us,  across the road and eventually disappeared into the heavy underbrush.

We went back up to the end of the park road (about 15 miles in),  to the “loop” trailhead.   We started  downstream along the Savage River, crossed a footbridge and then came back up the other side.  The mountain was not visible today, you really could not even tell where it was due to cloud cover. During this hike, we were passed by a park ranger that Cathy and Linda had met in the sled dog demonstration the day before.  Small world up here in Alaska.

Had to take a picture of the cool varigated boulder in the middle of the river:

We spotted this guy on the way back to camp, just below the Savage River crossing.  He was much larger that the ones we saw yesterday.  Can’t get  enough shots of mooses . . .

Once we arrived back in the ‘village” we had lunch . . . fish and chips (Alaska cod, of course) and we did a little more shopping, in some stores that we missed yesterday.  I picked up a couple of books.  We are putting together a small library in our motorhome.

Some recent additions:

The Last of his Kind  – The life and adventures of Bradford Washburn, “America’s boldest mountaineer.
Kusiq – An Eskimo life history from the Artic Coast of Alaska.
The Landmen – How they secured the Trans-Alaska pipeline right-of-way.
Crossing Denali – An ordinary man’s adventure atop North America
The Native People of Alaska – Traditional living in a northern land
To The Top of Denali – Climbing adventures on North America’s highest peak
The Cruelest Miles – The heroic story of dogs and men in a race against an epidemic
The Seventymile Kid – The lost legacy of the first ascent of Mt. McKinley

Off to Palmer in the morning . . .