Trip to Denali Park…

Back when my brother visited, we drove the RV down south to Denali Park, where Mt. McKinley is. The forest service doesn’t allow cars or big rigs to drive the roads inside the park except occasionally so when we got there we signed up for a bus tour into the park. Since it was to late in the day for the trip up to the turn around to get a view of Mt. McKinley, there was only one tour we could take that would work out for us and give us some hiking time. We also signed up for a bus tour the next day.

The drive down from Fairbanks was uneventful except we missed our turn into the park and went an extra 13 miles down to some little town before we discovered the mistake.

Here’s a shot looking south toward Denali. It is around 1 & 1/2 hour drive from Fairbanks.

We spotted this old restored Model A Ford at a little cafe.

Our trip into the park on the bus passed vistas like this:

Here’s where we got off the bus and began our hike up stream:

We were joined by several folks from the bus, and ended up talking while walking to these gals since we tended to be hiking at the same rate:

The weather was fine with ample places to take pictures:

Time for a rest & a visit:

After a couple hours hike, we head on back to the bus on the opposite side of the creek:

Bunches of these birds hanging around here:

Back on the bus, heading back to the Forest Service Headquarters we spotted this elk:

We spent the night at a nearby RV park and watched a little TV, resting up after the days hike. The next day was an all day bus tour into Denali Park in order to get a picture of Mt. McKinley. The bus goes to the only place on the road in the park were you can get a good view and a good picture. We didn’t have the time to go clear over to the base of the mountain but we hoped the bus trip would be good enough. We were wrong. Mt. McKinley is shrouded in clouds for most of the year so it wasn’t unusual that the next day we woke up to very cloudy weather. It stayed that way all day and sprinkled the entire day.

Here’s a few pictures from the bus or at the stops we made along the way to the turn around:

At the turn around is a visitors center and this picture is what Denali (Mt. McKinley) would have looked like had the weather cleared up for us:

On the trip back to the FS Center, we spotted this bear, it’s hard to see but it’s there, there were other animals but they were always to far away for pictures:

We got back to the FS center early enough in the day that we just headed back home to Fairbanks.