Denali National Park

August 9 and 10, 2013

We arrived at our room at the McKinley Chalet at about 1:00 pm.  We planned to go hiking, but our luggage hadn't arrived yet and we had a couple of things we needed from it.  We took the shuttle to the Denali National Park visitors center to get hiking information.  After we had the trail maps and information we needed, we took the shuttle back to the village and our bag was there.  We decided to hike the Meadow Views trail.  It was a fairly easy 3 mile trail to hike and had some amazing views.  We rushed to finish the hike though because we had to be sure to catch the final shuttle of the day back to the village.  After getting back to the village we ate supper at Prospector's Pizza.  It had over 40 microbrewery beers and some really good pizza.  Mike and I have been trying local beers all along our journey through Canada and Alaska and have had some really good beers.

View from the trail

another view

one more view

view

View of McKinley Village Chalet from the trail.

The next morning we got up fairly early so that we would have time to hike a trail or two before time for our tour into Denali National Park.  We decided to hike on the Horsehoe Lake trail from the visitor's center.  It was an interesting hike, but not as pretty as the one yesterday.  After finishing this hike we still had time so decided to do another hike, until it started raining - hard.  We hurried back to the visitor's center because we didn't want to spend the day wet.

Mike acting silly while hiking

Mary at the shuttle stop by the visitor's center

View of the lake at the end of the trail

Mary on the trail.

A section of the trail.

View from the trail.

The trail around the visitor were well maintained and so well marked that you really didn't need a map to stay on track.  If we had stayed here another day, we would have taken the shuttle into the park and hiked by the Savage River.  After hiking, we ate a Subway sandwich for lunch and got snacks to supplement the meal that would be supplied on the Tundra Wilderness Tour.  Our tour left at 2:00 pm.  It was still cloudy and a little rainy when our tour started, however as the tour continued, it got clearer and clearer.  We had the perfect weather for viewing scenery and wildlife.  And did we ever see the wildlife.  We saw 2 moose, too many caribou to count, 8 grizzlies, 5 Dall sheep, a fox, and the alpha male wolf of the pack that lives in that section Denali.  We even saw a grizzly charge a male caribou and a mother grizzly with her two cubs not far off the road.  What a thrill!  And finally at the end of the tour the sky cleared enough for us to get a really good view of Denali Mountain (or Mt. McKinley or just "The Mountain").

View from tour bus

Savage River

Savage River

Mike and I at the Savage River rest stop

Mountain at rest stop

Another mountain view

More mountains

Grizzley #1

More views

Caribou

More beautiful mountains

One of the many glaciers we saw

Another beautiful view

More mountains

Inside the park with beautiful mountains in the background

Another grizzly

The white dot in the middle is the alpha wolf.

Our best view of  Denali Mountain.

We are very glad that today was the last real day of our trip.  We have the train ride tomorrow, but the main part of vacation is over.  This 8 hour tour into Denali National Park could not have been any better.  We saw the big 5 of the wildlife, had clear views of the scenery, and at the end received the wonderful view of the mountain to remember.  What a high.