Denali -- Mount McKinley, AK July 11, 2013

 

Direction to our RV Park in the town of Denali from Fairbanks.  Leave Fairbanks and turn at the red light.  We ask "How far is it to the red light.  We don't want to miss our turn."  They told us that it is only 157 miles on route 3 (there is only 1 thru 11 road number in Alaska).  It sure is different from the lower 48!

 

 

 Denali National Park, The High One, as the Koyukon Athabascan people gave the massive peak that crowns the 600-mile-long Alaska Range.  It uses to be called Mount McKinley National Park at 6 million acres.  The park is larger than New Hampshire.   Mount McKinley or Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,320 feet above sea level.   At some 18,000 feet, the base to peak rise is considered the largest of any mountain situated entirely above sea level.  Mount McKinley is large enough to create its own localized weather.   It is the greatest frontier for wilderness adventure and remains largely wild and unspoiled.  The glacially-fed rivers are so young and so laden with pulverized rock, called rock flour; they can wonder across their broad flat valley’s to set new channels in a matter of days.   

Mount McKinley’s true scale is obscured by foothills and intervening peaks.  Clouds hide the summit two out of three days in the summer.   Mount McKinley still dominates the landscape by making its own weather and filling the valleys with glacial water and mile-wide gravel bars.        

I not sure why Jack makes me stand by the sign all the time?

  We did find a caribou taking a rest.  We first though it was sticks out in the high grasses, but another visitor had his camera up and told us that it was not a stick, but a caribou.  He had seen is standing and them it laid down before he could get out his camera.                

He started to move; maybe he will get up soon.   We got tired of waiting for the caribou and went on down to Savage Check.

The ranger station just pass the bridge is all the further that we can drive.  You must pay for a bus trip beyond this point.  We did find a Harlequin Ducks in the water.  We had a Mew Gull sitting on a car.  I was hoping that he did not make a deposit.            

We did find some Dall Sheep.   It is the white specks on the hill.  

I know that it is hard to believe, but that white speck is a sheep.  

We waited long enough by the river to have the caribou standing up when we went back.      

  He would not turn around, but he was standing.           

 

 

Exhibit of wolf in the visitor center called Toklat Wolf.    

The artist Gina Holloman 

  Cute little sheep        

 Cute little sheep    

 Grizzly Bear, you can tell by his hump.     

Jack took a picture of flower for me.      

They showed the visitor what happen to a dead moose.      

 

Maybe the wolf helped with the moose.

The Lyncs has to eat also.      

It would have been nice to see an eagle doing this out in the wild.       

A beaver is doing his thing.         

 

 The gold rush is a form of madness.

Can’t forget about the big moose.  

 

There was a hotel at the same site as the visitor center.  The hotel burned in 1972 and some of the material was used instead of going to the dump.   

This sleeping bear is in front of the visitor center.      

Jack is crazy about wolf; this picture was about 8 foot big.  The eyes followed you everywhere.       

Denali is a park that has gone back to the dogs.  The dogs team still patrol about 3,000 miles each winter.   It is a quite way to sneak up on poachers.         

Barb is checking out one of the dogs.    The dog is OK for a little pet.      

They even had some puppies.     

Some of the dogs look part wolf and this is part of the dog park.         

Getting the dog ready for a little run.   They pick the dogs up by the collar, so they do not pull the person over.   They call it “Dog Walk”.      

They made if back.  I sure hope they stop.      

They chained them in, so that they could talk to us, without them taking off.  

The lite color dog had to go back to his concrete pen, so that he would not eat the stones.    They have not figured out why they like to eat the stone.

They allow picture behind the sled.   

It felt kind of neat.      

They paint their bus up here as well as they do at home, but up here they sure do have pretty picture instead of advisement.