We took off at 7 PM for our flight to Mt. McKinley area and a landing at Eldridge Glacier.
We took many pictures. We warn you that this slide show is very long. It has been cut from 200 pictures to 99.
Today, we are headed for Byers Lake in Denali State Park for a couple of nights. After that we will stay a night at entrance to Denali National Park before traveling into the park 30 miles to camp at TEK campground. We plan on taking shuttle bus to end of road and also taking some hikes.
We left Talkeetna around noon after updating our blog. We travelled up the Parks Highway. Views of Mt. McKinley mountains appeared frequently as the road snaked its way north. When we reached the South Denali Viewpoint, we noticed that clouds were beginning to form around the mountains.
We arrived at Byers Lake at Milepost 146 on Parks highway to find a great state park. The campsites were located quite a distance from the highway down in a valley. Each campsite was nestled in the woods with good separation from each neighboring campsite. It was quiet and relaxing.
Our first night there, we built a campfire and went for a short walk to see the path around the lake. We did see bear poop on the trail which supported the warning posted that a bear had been seen in the campground the previous day.
We woke up the next morning with a fairly heavy rain falling. It lasted all day.
We did take a hike in the rain about half way around the lake. At the end of the lake, the trail left the lake, went up a hill and down to a walking suspension bridge over a large creek. While standing on the bridge, we heard a loud splash in the water upstream. Fred’s first reaction was its a bear. We could see nothing there. Then, we saw heard another splash and saw it was a fish jumping upstream. We waited for more action to no avail.
As we were leaving the bridge and starting to climp up, we looked back at the stream. We could see about a half dozen red salmon swimming in pairs. The more with watched, the more we realized that we were watching salmon spawning. Anytime another salmon came near a pair, it was chased off. We watched these rituals playing before us for about 10 minutes before we headed back to our campsite to dry off.
Back in our camper, we started the generator and watched a suspense movie before Milly prepared a great spagetti supper.
On morning of 8/6, we left Byers Lake in the rain and arrived at 11:30 am outside Denali National Park at Rainbow RV Park. There was still a slight rain falling on and off. We took in exhibits at Visitor Center, viewed 2 good two Denali movies, picked up our TEK campsite and bus tickets, watched a sled dog demo, got some Denali Hiking advice, bought book “Denali Walks” and prepared for our Denali Wilderness Adventure.
Tomorrow we will go to TEK campground 30 miles into park for 3 nights. The weather forecast is for showers for several days. Hope that changes. We will do short hikes at various points along the Park Road. We will be out of cell phone and WIFI range for at least 3 -4 days.
We did not take our camera on our Byers Lake Hike or on to Denali Visitor Center. Two mistakes!
On the morning of 08/07/2009, we drove the 30 miles into Denali National park to the Teklanika Campground, where we would stay for three nights. Once we reached the campground, we could not use our car except to return to the park entrance. We has a TEK shuttle bus pass that gave us a reserved seat on a 1st morning tour bus to end of park – Kantishna, some 90 miles into park. The pass also allowed us to ride a shuttle bus anywhere in the park for those 3 days. We could get on and off as often as we wanted.
When we got up, the weather was cloudy with low lying fog. It began to clear as we got going.
We stopped for short hikes to Horseshoe Lake and another to an old cabin.
When we got to the TEK campground, we found the campsites fairly private with excellent views of the surrounding mountains. After we set up, we went for a walk along the Teklanika Riverbed behind the campground.
Our park tour bus picked us up a the TEK Campground at 8:55 AM for our trip to to the end of the park road into Denali National Park. The park road is 90 miles long but TEK campground is aleady at mile 29. The trip was a total of 120 miles. We returned about 7 PM. We stopped for rest breaks and at points of interest about once an hour.
Anytime someone spotted wildlife, they yelled out for the bus driver to stop. Many times the bus driver spotted the wildlife first. We stopped often! Half way to the end of the park, the bus driver told us we had seen more grizzlies than any trip he could remember.
The weather was partly cloudy. We had expected showers which never happened.
We saw Dahl sheep, Moose, Wolf, Fox, Caribou, Arctic ground squirrels and of course Grizzlies. We saw just about all of most people have on their wish lists.
We saw quite a lot of wildlife in an area called Sable Pass.
We intended to meet Emmitt Peters, a guide at the Kantishna Road House. Emmitt is the son of Edna Peters, who was married by Fred’s Uncle in Ruby – a small isolated village on the Yukon River. Emmitt was aslo baptised by Fr. Ron Dunfey. We thought that the bus would stop near the Kantishna Road House. It didn’t. If we knew more about the bus and how it operated as we do now, we may have met Emmitt.
We were at Denali’s Teklanika Campground on our second full day 30 miles into Denali National Park. It had rained all night and was still drizzling in the morning. We decided stay put in the camper and hope the weather cleared.
A little before noon with the weather still dreary, we decided to go for a hike up the Teklanika River riverbed. We put on multiple layers of clothing and our wet weather coats and headed out. We didn’t bring our camera which was a mistake. We took a trail to the river and it led us up onto a ridge above the river that had a wonderful view of the braided river down below. We came down to the riverbed and followed it upstream for about an hour. We also took a short walk into the woods on the edge of the river. We posted a rock piling and drift wood into a signal so we could find our way back to the trail.
When we got back, Milly cooked soup for lunch. The weather appeared to be clearing up. We decided to get on a shuttle bus. Our plan was to get off when we got to a high alpine tundra area and take a hike in that environment.
We boarded a shuttle bus heading further into the park. We asked the driver where there was a good spot to get off to hike in alpine tundra. She told us to get off at Polychrome Pass about an hour up the road. When We reached another alpine area that looked good to us, we asked to be dropped off. The driver told us it was a restricted area and that we had to stay on the road. When we got off, we didn’t know where we were except that it was beautiful and that alpine tundra was all around us. We quickly realized it was at Sable Pass where we had seen bears and a caribou herd the day before.
The weather had pretty much cleared. There were clouds around but it was mostly sunny.
We did take a very short walk into the fields to get a feel of walking in the tundra. It was a restricted area because it was an area frequented by many animals. We did stick to the road, hiking thru Sable Pass towards Polychrome. We saw many animals. It started with Dahl sheep and a squirrel.
Then, we came upon a caribou standing out in the field by himself. It appeared to be transfixed in the same position for several minutes. We passed on, when all of a sudden, another caribou came racing across the field to our left and up toward the road. We continued walking towards where we thought it went. Then, the caribou came up on the road and started towards us. It seemed we were going to face a battle of wills. We held our ground and the caribou stopped, looked us over and headed off up the hill on the other side of the road.
Shortly thereafter we came across 3 grizzly bears eating at the side of the road in front of us. The mother of the 2 cubs looked at us before heading into a wooded patch. One of the cubs decided to take a look for himself. There are pictures of the bears looking us over in the slide-show below. Keep in mind that we were about as close to these grizzlies as you ever want to get when out by yourself hiking.
We also saw two other grizzlies a little further down the road.
We decided to take the next shuttle bus that came along. We got on. We were headed back across the same area we had hiked. Two different sightings of bears were seen. One was a mother and two small cubs that were playing with each other.
When we got back, Milly asked Fred if he had seen the two cubs standing looking at him when he was taking a picture of their mother? He hadn’t.
In the morning of August 1oth, we decided to stay another night in Denali National Park. We moved from Teklanika campground at 30 miles mark to Riley Creek campground near the park entrance. On our way back to beginning of park, we went on two hikes off the road.
We climbed a small dome or mountain near primrose ridge between Sanctuary River and Savage river. The tundra we climbed upon felt like walking on a real soft mattress or set of pillows. You sank quite a bit. We had to work to get to the top. We stopped to rest several times. Once, Fred laid down and enjoyed the tundra softness. Once we got to the top, we sat down and looked for wildlife in the valleys below. We didn’t spot anything. We also waited for the McKinley cloud cover to disappear or lesson so we could get a clear view. The McKinley clouds almost lifted a couple of times but we finally gave up as more clouds appeared. We did get some partial photos of McKinley.
When we got to Savage River, we hiked up a gravel tourist trail along the river for about a mile. We saw many, many ptarmigans, the Alaskan State bird. They walk most of the time but show pretty white wings when they fly. We could never get a photo of them in flight as much as we tried.
On our final night in Denali, we attended Cabin Night dinner theater. It was great! We had already seen the cabins and read the stories of the people that were portrayed in the theater musical. The songs of Alaska were heartwarming. We had now seen so much of Alaska and Denali, we were feeling much more apart of it. The food was served family style with all the Ribs, salmon, beans and corn that you could eat. We had blackberry cobbler for dessert. No one left hungry.
On the morning of August 11th, we left Denali and headed for Fairbanks. We checked into the full service Riverside RV Park for 3 days. We both took long long, hot showers. It felt so good! Our campsite is very nice for an RV Park. We are about 100 feet from a boat put in on the Chena River. We plan of kayaking the Chena and Tanana Rivers for our campsite. We are resting and taking it easy for now.
