Denali National Park

Thursday, July 1 -- Today Joe and Wilma had an Excellent Adventure. Dave and Mazie opted out of this tour, and Collins and Marilyn are on their way to Anchorage to meet Marilyn's sister who is flying in on Saturday. 

Joe and I took a 66-mile bus ride into Denali National Park.  This park is Awesome.  It is 6 million acres of wilderness, there is only one road into it, and most of it is gravel.  The mountain, Mt. McKinley, showed itself for us - a rare treat.  And we saw lots of animals.  Although it rained during the night, today turned out to be fairly sunny, and the 8-hour bus ride was very enjoyable, even with all our coughing (I'm not sure everyone else enjoyed that part).

Our first animal was a ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird.  There were two of them here, but only one shows up in the pictures.  It's that little tan spot in the grass, just before the bush.  We actually saw three of these today.  There were also some seagull-type birds in this area.  These birds are called mew gulls, but they look like seagulls, white with gray feathers.

Next we saw a caribou.

We saw several of these today.  It was a great day for seeing animals.  Caribou lose their antlers between December and February each year, they start growing new ones in the spring and the antlers are usually mature by August.  There is what they call a "shovel" part of the antler that comes down to the nose.  It takes 5-7 years to grow this shovel, and then the caribou becomes a trophy.  There are approximately 2500 caribou in the park.  These caribou do not migrate -- most of them live in the park their whole lives.  They usually have just one calf at a time.

Then we saw a couple snowshoe hares.  And a Great Northern Harrier Hawk.  And two golden eagles.

This is a gorgeous park.  The scenery, even without the animals, is spectacular. In this picture below, you can see the magnificent Mt. McKinley rising in the background, totally snow-covered.  It's very rare to get to see this mountain in the summer because it is usually clouded in.  Today, there were clouds, but we finally did get to see all of it.  I'll post several pictures with clouds, but as we were on the return trip, the clouds cleared and Joe got some good pictures of all of it that you can see, above the mountains in front of it. 

Here's just some scenery pictures that Joe took. 

This mountain is off to the left of Mt. McKinley, and it is called Mt. Foraker.  (Joe was trying to zoom in on Mt. McKinley, and he got the wrong mountain.)

At one rest stop, they had some antlers to look at.  Here's Joe as a caribou.

The moose antlers were halved, but Joe said just one half of them was much heavier than the caribou rack.

And here's another picture of that mountain, with no clouds blocking it.  This is the tallest mountain in North America, at 20,320 feet. 

Here's a great shot of another caribou.  We saw 14 caribou in the park today.

And finally here's a bear picture.  We actually saw 9 bears today, all grizzlies.  The first one was a sow with 2 cubs, and the cubs were playing.  Then a few minutes later, Joe spotted two big grizzlies by a bush.   Then we saw a mama with 2 cubs up on a ridge.  When we went around a corner, there was a caribou with a calf running across the road, and heading right toward the bear with the cubs we had just seen.  We didn't get to wait to see if they met up, but we hope they didn't.  

This bear was digging, either roots or after a ground squirrel.  It was the closest one we saw, so Joe did get some pictures of it.  They estimate there are 300-350 grizzlies in the park.  There are some black bear here too, but we were not in the area where they are found.  Grizzlies usually have 2-3 cubs at a time.  The grizzlies in the park are blonde, due to their diet.  They are mostly vegetarians, but they do eat a little bit of meat if they have the opportunity.  The grizzly we saw at Skagway was much darker brown.

We love seeing the bears!  And we got to watch this one for a few minutes, which was awesome.

Just about at the end of our tour, we saw our first moose of the day, and we did see one more right outside the visitor area.  There are approximately 1200 moose in the park.  Moose usually bear twins, but they can have from 1 to 3 babies at a time.

I think I've mentioned Alaska's braided rivers before.  Here's a good picture of one.  They are fed by glacial water, which carries a lot of silt.  When the river channel fills up with silt, the water finds another channel.  That's what makes them braided. 

We also got to watch 2 gray wolves cross a big valley.  It was too far away for a photo, though.  And we saw 7 Dall sheep, which are always real far away, up on high ridges.  Dall sheep are only found in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. 

The small pools in the picture above are called kettle basins.  They form when a piece of ice gets jabbed into the ground.  When it melts, which might take years, it forms a pond.  Sometimes these dry up, but not always.

That pretty well takes care of todays lesson.  We had a great bus driver who told us a lot about the park, and I wanted to get it written down so I don't forget it.  So, now everyone who reads the blog knows a lot more about Denali Park!