“The High One” Mount McKinley

Our stop at Denali National Park was really a highlight of this trip and included a 6-hour bus ride into the park where private vehicles are rarely allowed.  We found out why right away; especially the folks that are afraid of heights, cliffs, shear drop-off edges, not having control over the situation and of course, dying.  They’ve never heard of guard rails and there is much of the dirt road that we were on that is strictly single lane.  If there is no wide spot or something that resembles a pull out, one of the vehicles has to back up.  Remember now – there are no guard rails. 

The scenery was amazing.  The magnitude of the mountains was over my head to comprehend.  Talk about big.  Before I go on,  I need to tell you, no, we did not see the mountain.  We hoped, but like so much of the time, the tallest peak on the North American continent at 20,320 feet, was behind rain clouds.  Denali National Park consists of 6,000,000 acres, (yes, million) and became a national park in 1917.  It was made a national park and preserve to protect large animals not because of the mountain.  The Athabascan Native People referred to the mountain as the “High One” and is part of the 600 mile long Alaska Range.  The park has 650 species of flowering plants and 37 mammal species that are recorded.  Much of the park is deep beds of permafrost – ground frozen for thousands of years with only the thinnest layer of topsoil that thaws each summer to support life. 

We saw quite a few Dall sheep up in the rocks.  Dall sheep are members of the bighorn family and graze mostly on alpine tundra.

Not too many caribou and no herds, just single animals.  They usually travel in groups.  Both sexes sport antlers – the only member of the deer family to do so.  The ones we saw were collared.  No explanation why.

Moose are not herd members.  The calves are born in May and may stay with the cow for one or two years.  We didn’t see near as many as we had hoped, but we did see moose in Denali.

What we did see was an absolutely unexpected bear encounter.  A grizzly came walking down the road in front of the bus and we all fell so silent and took picture after picture.  He didn’t change his pace nor did he even look at us.  We were all blown away.

This sow had two cubs; young ones and she sniffed around until she located a ground squirrel or some critter and raised up on the front legs and pounced on the critter or it’s tunnel and the cubs came a runnin’ and kinda, sorta shared the meal.  As much as a bear can share.

Remember, these pictures just don’t do the park justice, but we tried and told everyone we would.

Connie’s lesson (a few days worth):  There’s bad news and there’s good news.  The good news is that we don’t have a broken water pipe on the 5th-wheel, dripping water on the ground.  The bad news is that we don’t have a 2 1/2 gallon plastic container of spring water for coffee.  The trailer slide is mightier than the plastic container.

We’re off to Anchorage next!