Alaska – Denali National Park

We were up early to pick up our sack lunch from the hotel restaurant (The Perky Moose).

The Denali Tour bus arrived at 6:30 a.m.  This was an older bus and not nearly as comfortable as the luxury bus we had been traveling in.

Besides our group there were also people on the bus from 3 other hotels.  It was packed.

It didn’t take long to get to the National Park.  After a certain point, only Denali buses are allowed on the roads in the park.  We stopped a few times to get off the bus. 

This tour ran 5 hours. Our week long trip was all inclusive but I believe the cost of this 5 hour tour was $128 each.  We had beautiful views throughout the day.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of wildlife to be seen. At the very beginning of the trip a moose came out on the road behind the bus. Unfortunately no one had figured out how to get the windows open yet, so this shot was taken through the dirty window. 

The driver/interpreter was from San Antonio, Texas and had been driving this tour for over 15 years. He was very knowledgeable and kept talking about what we might see here or what could be over there, but all in all the animals just weren't cooperating. 

We finally spotted a single Brown (Grizzly) Bear feeding on a slope. It was pretty far away but we'd gotten the windows open by now and I managed to get a few good shots. 

There was still snow in the mountains. 

The buses each have a certain time to arrive.  Even being picked up at 6:30 we were not the first group of buses to arrive.  We saw a couple of other buses before getting to the visitor center.

Everyone was given a snack box with this handy map of the park printed on the box. 

The bus could only get to a certain point and then had to turn around because of a landslide on the road. The landslide occurred in 2021 and the road will be closed through 2023 while it is rerouted. 

On the way out we saw the same bear in the same spot and took some additional pictures. 

After five hours and a lot of scenery (but few animals!), we arrived at the visitor center.  We could either stay on the bus and go back to our hotel or catch a later bus back to our hotel.

We decided to stay in the park.  Buses back to the hotels run every hour. 

It was a very warm day for sitting outside eating our sack lunch.

There is a working group of sled dogs used in the park and a demonstration was scheduled for 2:00.  We had a couple of hours to kill and watched two short movies while waiting.  They were well made. 

It looked like everyone still in the park was waiting on the bus to take us to the dog sled demonstration.

We were told the dogs were friendly and we could pet any of the dogs that came up to us.  

It was so hot, none of the dogs bothered getting up. 

Finally, the demonstration started.  The dogs were ready to go. 

They took off, out of sight, then came around the corner and a dog fight started.  The handlers rushed to pull the 2 dogs apart.  Those dogs were taken away and the remaining team trotted in front of us.  

It really wasn’t worth waiting 2 hours to watch.

Since everyone in the park was waiting for buses to return to their hotels, we had to wait in line for a little while. 

Dinner was on our own. We had each been given a $50 dinner voucher for the hotel restaurant, but between the two of us we barely broke $50 total. The waitress was really puzzled as to why we didn't want desserts or perhaps a bottle of wine to use the vouchers up, but we were full and ready to get back to the room. It had been a long day.

Next time: A stop in Palmer then back to Anchorage.