Mush mush dogs!

Once again the weather here in Denali has been in our favor. According to the locals, is the best week of the summer. No rain yet and the worst we have experienced was some wind.

After breakfast at the hotel (a mediocre buffet), we caught the free shuttle from our hotel to the visitor center. This building is new (and LEED silver certified), nestled in between trees and hills. It is beautifully designed both inside and out with several interactive exhibits on the park. We had to watch the time to make sure we caught one of the buses to the sled dog presentation. The visitor center has a large bookstore with a wide selection of Alaska themed books, and a large grill and coffee shop. 

The sled dog presentation was a lot of fun for all of us. We were able to pet and play with a majority of the dogs and even saw some puppies. All the dogs are Alaskan huskies, bred for their speed, strength and paws but not their looks. The result is a wide variety of colors and sizes.

Jamie, the ranger who gave the demonstration was not only knowledgable about the dogs and the park, but also a skilled public speaker. We've seen our share of rangers who lack those speaking skills so we appreciated her finesse and ability to manage the crowd while keeping the demonstration going. At the end, she hooked up the dogs on a sled with wheels and ran a small loop in front of the crowd. The speed was certainly impressive and the excitement of the dogs evident.

Instead of taking the bus back to the visitor center, we decided to hike back. We agreed to meet Mary back at the center and headed off in our adventure. While we were certainly enjoying Denali before, hiking through its wild for 2.8 miles certainly brought the magnificence of this park to life.  We saw relatively fresh bear claw marks on trees, squirrels harvesting mushrooms, rivers and creeks wild blueberry bushes and glorious mountains. We even tripped over a little moose skat on our journey. It took us about 1:15 to make the journey and the weather held out the entire hike. It was really and experience that all of us were glad we took.

After catching up with Mary and grabbing lunch at the grill, we headed back to our hotel for some brief down time. The we boarded a tour bus for our official excursion into the park. Now, there are about 3 most common trips into Denali, all accomplished via bluebird bus. The long one is about 15 hours (immediately nixed as an option for us). The most common tour is billed as 7to 8 hours but everyone we talked to claimed it was closer to 11 hours. These trips are designed to see wildlife as main priority. 

The third option and the One we took, was the Denali history and nature tour. It lasted 4 1/2 to 5 hours and included 3 stops: one at the wilderness access center to see a movie about why the park was first formed, another at a cabin built in 1941 with a living actor telling how they lived life in Denali at that time, and a stop at stampede pass with a visit from an Athabaskan native talking about how her family survives today. The stops made this trip go a lot faster than sitting in a bus looking for wildlife for 5 hours. I am so glad we picked this tour.

While the focus of the tour is not wildlife, we did spot a significant amount, including: a grizzly bear we saw going both in and out (he was munching on some berries and soaking up sunshine), moose and caribou. The most impressive sight was 2 giant caribou bucks who stood about 75 feet from the road! They were enormous and impressive specimens, standing stalk still for more than 5 minutes incredibly close to our bus. Our guide says that never happens and after hearing there are only 2,000 caribou in all of the 64 million acres of the park,  we understand why. It was a real coup to see all that we did.

Even though it was late when we returned, we had worked up quite an appetite. We decided to dine at a lovely restaurant that sits atop the bluff overlooking the town of Denali. It was called Alpenglow and we had to call for shuttle to get us. After only waiting about 10 minutes, our driver arrived with a small and old bus. We had to make another couple stops and on the way down a very steep hill, the driver lost power and therefore steering control of the bus. It turned out fine and he was able to get it started again, only to have it die out again a little down the road. He had to pull over and radio for another bus to pick us up. 

Regardless of the journey there, the restaurant was well worth the trip. The food was surprisingly good and the view unmatched. We watched heavy purple clouds roll in around the mountains, making us suspect a storm (although it never materialized). Dad had to point out that the Covey Run wine on their menu was in fact a Washington wine, not Californian. Too funny.

We called it a night at that point, needing to take showers and pack up for travel the next day.

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