DENALI

Denali National Park is like no other park we have ever seen.Cars are allowed in only the first 14 miles and after that visitors must ride buses to different stops along the only r0ad in the park which is 95 miles long. Most people stay on the outside and ride the bus to see wildlife but we unwisely chose to tent camp 85 mile in at Wonder Lake campground and found more mosquitoes than stars in the sky, and head nets are a necessity. It rained every day, we didn't see Mt McKinley(Denali) and it was cold but no fires allowed. Denali has open tundra but we were in the lower elevations in a spruce forest and the only trail we hiked was rocky, muddy and with no views. However Denali is gorgeous in some areas. We cut our visit short after 2 nights and got the bus out which was the best part of the trip. We had our first view of Mt. Denali along with great sitings of caribou, 4 grizzly bears and a red fox. We watched a wolf trot beside a river for over 3 miles as the river paralleled the road as well as watched a grizzly about 500 yds away when a caribou came over a ridge, saw the bear and jumped, approached(not too close) and circled the bear in a seldom seen bear-caribou encounter. Lots of Denali has miles of visibility with no trees, ponds and lakes and is easily walked. Visitors can get off the buses at any time and catch another a few hours later which is what we should have done. Denali (6 million acres)is a true wilderness with few trails and hikers must bushwhack over the tundra. There are only a few campgrounds and those are fairly close to the entrance, where only smaller campers or tents are allowed. A great experience but not one to be repeated. We are now in Fairbanks, taking a couple of days to wash clothes, reprovision and get ready for the trip home. We plan to take the top of the world highway through Dawson City, Chicken, etc and hope to be home in about 3 weeks repeating most of the trip up except that we plan to come back through Great Falls, Montana instead of Seattle. May or may not post much else as we hope to travel fairly fast and not make any stops except to camp.