Denali National Park

Wow! We lucked out on the weather today. Last night we had high winds and rain off and on all night and the forecast for today was for more of the same.  But when we caught our bus for Denali at 5:30AM this morning the skies began to clear and our hopes began to rise that we might actually get to see a glimpse of Mt. McKinley.

 Only 25-30% of the people who visit the park actually get to see the mountain.

Our tour started well as our driver stopped the bus soon after entering the park for a wolf walking down the highway.







The sun rising over the mountains gave us some beautiful views.

We also saw a fox, another wolf, several caribou, lots of Dall sheep, golden eagles, and several grizzlies.

Then came our first tantalizing views of Mt. McKinley.

 We were afraid the clouds were going to move in before we got close enough for a good view but fortunately the clouds held off long enough for us to get a pretty good view of it.
These pictures were taken about 32 miles away, our closest approach.

On the way back we stopped at a visitor center where Nancy did her caribou impression.

And the clouds started to move in again.

This is our campsite in Healy.

After the tour we went shopping for a little while then the group went out to dinner at the Salmon Bake restaurant.  We had a great meal with garlic potatoes, grilled vegetables, steak, salmon and dessert.

Gas was $3.519 in Healy. The weather today was cool with temps in the 50s.  Tomorrow we head for Fairbanks.  We had to change our itinerary next week because the Top of World Highway is closed indefinitely because of washouts caused by all the rain.