Denali

We bought our bus tickets ahead of time. $21/ticket got you a ride to Eilson Visitor Center and back, about 120 miles round trip. And Eilson is only the halfway point of the road. Bus tickets go fast, so you should get yours in advance no matter what time of the summer you are going.

We found a campground near the park entrance which asked us to pay at the ranger station. Well, that was closed so we just found an empty spot and spent the night. The next day we got up and had just enough time to drive to the ranger station and get on our bus.

The bus had a few empty seats which would be filled when we picked up some other people along he way. Our bus driver, Chuck, explained the rules -- wear your seat belts, don't yell at or otherwise disturb the animals, and don't feed the animals. He explained that we would see a lot more wildlife if everybody was constantly scanning the horizons for animals. If you saw an animal you were supposed to yell "STOP" and we'd figure out what kind of animal it was later. We were also encouraged to yell out questions and Chuck would keep talking as long as the audience seemed to be listening.

Chuck had a lot of knowledge about the park and the animals. He even described what went into his 2/3 successful McKinley summits. But I think having a busload of eager tourists on such a nice day after the long winter really helped to release his flood of monologue. Wow, he could talk.

No sooner did Chuck explain the rules about stopping for animals than we he spotted a moose right by the side of the road. Turns out this must have been an omen for all of the animal sightings we were to see that day. Further up the road we saw a ptarmagin, Alaska's state bird. We didn't stop long because we'd see plenty of them closer to Eilson.

The first major sighting was at the 13 mile mark where road access just begins to be prohibited to everything except park busses. There is a bridge that crosses a river, and at the far end of the bridge there were some professional photographers shooting pictures of a mother and baby foxes! The bus stopped for a while, but I never got a good shot of anything. I vowed that we would try the fox bridge again that evening since it was still just accessible by car.

More bus ride showed us carribou and a small moose family way up on the hill where they didn't belong. Chuck thought something was wrong because they weren't near any food. I hoped that wasn't the best view of moose we were gonna get this trip. The bus stopped at a rest area and we stretched our legs.

A litte ways down the road somebody spotted a bear on the hill that defined the inside curve of the road. Chuck stopped the bus and then the engine. Wow! What a sight! A huge grizzly ambling down the hill. Wait, there were two cubs right behind her! We couldn't believe it; Kelly was about to cry with delight. Our seats were on the correct side of the bus to see the bears. While the babies kept their distance from the road the mother plodded on down to within 30 feet from the bus.

We watched her forage for roots right next to the bus. The cubs wandered back up the hill and out of sight. Dang. Chuck explained that this was rare for a mother grizzly to let her cubs out of her sight. Must not be a very good mother. What did Chuck have against all of these animal moms? Mom eventually headed back up the hill in search of her cubs. We thanked the woman who spotted the bears for having such a keen eye -- no way would I have seen them. We'll have to pay a lot more attention.

I explained to Kelly that our bear encounter was a lot like the wildlife sightings I experienced in the Serengetti and Antarctica. There you are minding your own business and out pops an animal you can usually only see at the zoo. It's really a highlight of the trip, and if you get enough of those sightings, they become the trip.

The bus continued on. We stopped at the Polychrome Pass rest area to stretch our legs again. We weren't too far away from the bears, but nobody was worried that they would magically appear over the hill again. Back on the bus and the next animal was a dall sheep.

Several dall sheep were grazing on a precarious ledge below the road. Chuck stopped and while people were clamoring for pictures he explained that at this time of year dall sheep could be more easily found closer to the road. Not giving us too much time he drove on, turned a corner, and boom -- we approached a whole family right by the side of the road.

Denali National Park was created to protect the dall sheep. There's a characture of a dall sheep on the park entrance sign. In the early 1900s the dall sheep were hunted for their fur and meat almost to extinction. It wasn't very hard for a hunter to spot one on the brown hillsides, so they were easy picking. Since the park's creation the sheep population has strongly rebounded.

I took a few pictures and noticed the guy sitting in front of me also had a Nikon camera, but he only had an 80mm lens. I offered him my 400mm. He took a look through the borrowed lens and leapt a little bit out of his chair in surprise. "Honey," he said leaning towards his wife. "I know what I want for Christmas!"

We headed for the Eilson (pronounced Eye-uhl-sun) Ranger Station, about 60 miles from the park entrance. The road continued further, but was closed this early in the season. Eilson offered a stunning view of McKinley, a view that only 5% of the visitors got to see in such clear weather. Indeed a large calendar covered a small wall inside the station where each day's box showed a hand-drawn depiction of the view/weather on McKinley.

At Eilson we had our scheduled picnic lunch, and while we waited for seats to open up at the tables we browsed the ranger station. Just as the ranger was telling us we couldn't eat inside the station a second ranger came bursting in holding something curious wrapped in a paper towel. "It's wolf poop! And it has hair in it!" I guess I can appreciate how rare wolf sightings are, but even the first ranger thought his excitement about excrement was a little strange.

We got a seat at the picnic table and ate our lunch. I tried my GPS again, but it still wasn't tracking more than one satellite. I verified the settings, but that didn't help. Sheesh, the thing worked great in Antarctica, how come it doesn't work in Alaska?

We boarded our bus to return to the park entrance. On the way back we found some more dall sheep on the side of the hill. Kelly and I decided that we would take the RV up to the mile 13 bridge that evening to see if the foxes would come out. As we approached the end of our ride Kelly observed that the trees seemed a lot greener than when we had left. Just then Chuck announced, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say it really greened up while we were gone."

One bus trip was enough this early in the season so when we got to the park entrance I traded in tomorrow's ticket for a partial refund. The status board behind the counter showed that all of the busses were full, so I was glad to allow 2 other people the opportunity to see the wildlife we saw.

It was still too early for dinner, so we took a hike down to a scenic lake near the ranger station. Here's where we noticed the wildflowers just starting to come out. When we got to the lake there were signs everywhere telling us not to disturb the beaver, but we never saw any beaver to disturb. Saw a few beaver lodges; they must have been inside.

Outside the park entrance station a ranger had a few animal pelts to show the kids. Perhaps surprisingly, the bear pelt was quite soft while the moose pelt was rough like a horse. The bear pelt had 2-inch claws which were filed down from their original size. Yikes.

We got in the RV and headed to the bridge where the foxes were. We had a good view of the fox den to know when they were out, so we had some dinner. Kelly climbed the ladder to the top of the RV to read and was joined by a mewgull, a type of seagull. I remember asking Chuck what the deal was with all of these seagulls flying around when there wasn't any sea anywhere near the place. They were here to roost and have babies. At the end of the summer the mewgull parents fly away to leave their chick to fend for itself -- by then it can fly.

After dinner we brought the camera stuff out to the bridge and met a few professional photographers. Next to their stuff, my equipment looked like it was made by Playskool. They were really nice and told us about their Alaska Wildlife Images website where they sell their images and offer free electronic postcards. Of course they were waiting for the foxes, too. They had been there in the morning and evening for a few days and averaged about 6-8 rolls of film for each encounter. Wow. The husband and wife team lived in Anchorage and spent at least the last 12 years photographing Alaska together. They explained that the fox pups were the youngest they had ever seen, and that we should feel privledged to witness something so rare. I felt priveledged just seeing caribou.

We waited 2 hours and the foxes never came out. I took a picture of some distant caribou to make the evening more worthwhile, and we packed up and headed to the campsite. It was pretty cold out by now (9:00p), even though it was also still pretty bright out. On our way back to the RV Kelly was acosted by a disturbed ptarmagin who was bellowing up a storm. He appeared quite peeved as he glared at us for taking the path that we did. We didn't know what we just did wrong and had a hard time surpressing our laughter at the sounds he was making. The ptarmagin got over it and flew away. We headed back to the campground.

The campground was full this time so we had to park just outside the park entrance. This RV thing is great -- wherever you can find a flat parking place is good enough to spend the night. The traffic was a little noisy, but we were tired enough....

The next morning we got up early and headed back to the bridge to try again. We had breakfast in the parking lot and as we were finishing up, Kelly spotted the foxes! We scrambled to get our equipment ready and join the pro photographers who had been on the bridge since 6:30a. On our way towards the bridge I noticed a big brown lump heading into the hills -- a porcupine!

Here we spent almost 1.5 hours taking 100 pictures between the two of us. Other people droped by here and there for a few shots. When the foxes were doing something interesting you could hear all the cameras click at the same time. When they were doing something really interesting you could hear the pros' cameras going off like a machine gun. No wonder they go through 6-8 rolls a film each encounter.

Denali tour busses stopped on their way through the park, just like we had stopped the day before. We watched everyone peer through the windows trying to get a good shot. We snickered snobbishly to ourselves at the people with the tiny disposable cameras -- later they'd be pointing to a speck in their picture trying to convince people it was a fox. Still, everyone got to experience them and that was the point.

In her haste, Kelly forgot to bring out an extra roll of film. Frustrated, she ran back to the RV to get more. She didn't expect that she would take so many pictures. Neither did I! She returned after just missing a particularly cute romp between the mother and 2 pups. She returned in time to watch one of the braver little guys venture out onto the road. Yikes!

After what seemed like both 2 hours and 2 minutes, the mother fox took off to go hunting. The pups mostly headed inside the den occasionally coming out for a peek. Guess it's time to go and see what else Alaska has to offer besides foxes in Denali.

On our way out of the park we easily spotted 3 caribou munching close to the road. We definitely had to stop. Our strategy was always to take whatever immediate picture of a new animal we could, then work to get better pictures. That way we would at least have one picture of all the animals.

Just before the park entrance we stopped at a secondary ranger station to get an official brochure and map for my collection. The primary station had run out the day before. We found a few flowers nearby and noticed the neat view of the railroad trestle crossing the river.

So much for Denali National Park. What an amazing first 2.5 days we had already. What will the rest of the trip hold for us?!