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Denali National Park Bus Tour 131.2 mi (211.6 km) |
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It’s raining and pouring, everyone!
But there’s no time for snoring! This morning, we had a bright and early 5:00 AM wakeup call to catch our bus into Denali National Park!
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There is only one 89-mile road running through this massive park (the size of New Hampshire), and the rest is all wilderness! For most of the year, the only way to get to the park’s interior is by taking one of these buses. While you can technically get on and off wherever you like, since you don’t need a trail to hike in this park, keeping people together on public transportation is a great way to keep visitors and wildlife safer! Our bus today is heading for Eielson Visitor Center, and hopefully another view of the mighty Denali!
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The road started off in moose habitat, and right away, we saw a huge bull moose in the willows! It stared right back at us, eye-level with the bus windows, its antlers as big as a card table! Looking at it towering over the willows, I wondered what it must be like to spent your days swimming in food!
From there, we picked up more folks at some campgrounds further into the park, then made a stop at the Teklanika Rest Area to clean the mud (so much mud) off the windows with squeegees standing by, and to get our first glimpses out over the Teklanika River Valley!
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After a mere ten minutes, we were back on the bus and headed for our next stop, waving at a flock of ptarmigans and a couple of grizzlies along the way! We slogged past deep, green valleys stretching far back into the imagination. With few exceptions, it’s technically okay to get off the bus and hike anywhere in the park, which I sure wouldn’t mind trying some time. Today, though, we were on a strict schedule, so strict that we got five measly minutes to take in the misty views from Polychrome Pass at Mile 46!
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The rain continued to fall, and the wildlife crawled to shelter for the next leg of the tour, making it a laid back and relaxing ride to the Toklat Visitor Center. In between rain squalls, I got to take a good look at the twisty, windy Toklas River. Alaska is famous for braided rivers like this, which form from glacial meltwater carrying lots of sediment. As the sediment builds up, it shifts the water flow. This happens a lot, so plants can’t grow in the river bed!
High on the hill, we saw the tiny white specks of Dall sheep. Though this park is most famous for its moose, bears, and caribou, it was the Dall sheep that made this New Hampshire-sized park a reality! When the railroad was being built, merchant hunters nearly brought the Dall sheep to extinction, but today, their numbers have recovered wonderfully!
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Our last stretch brought us to the Eielson Visitor Center at Mile 66. Normally, this spot offers great views of Denali, but today, she was tucked away in clouds. We really lucked out yesterday! So, instead of continuing to Wonder Lake and Kantishna like we originally planned, we sat down to enjoy our lunches and listen to the ranger talk about the problem of too many hikers throwing their poop-filled bags into the crevasses of Denali! Not a pleasant lunch topic!
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So, when lunch was over, we moseyed around the tundra, which was already changing to lovely shades of red as the autumn approached. I’ve spent a lot of time around the most gigantic plants, but there is something just as magical about these mini leaves dotting the landscape here. I think if Denali had been out today, we’d never have noticed them!
The rain came back pretty hard, so we hopped on the next bus back to Riley Creek. It was a soggy, sloggy trip back, and I napped most of the way. We saw a couple of caribou waiting out the rain, but by and large, it was a quiet return trip. We headed into the nearby town of Healy for their famous Salmon Bake. Ironically, salmon was the most expensive dish on the menu! This place had lots of character, though, serving Yak-a-dillas (made with “100% Alaskan raised yak”) and absolutely massive cobb salads, half the side of a basketball, piled high with scallops, shrimp, and crab meat!
After a bit of souvenir shopping, we returned to camp for more mushroom spotting, hot showers at the mercantile, and a card game called “Coup,” which involved trying to overthrow the other players through lying and deceit. Long story short, we were all too tired to figure out the rules and hit the hay.
Dream on!
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Total Ground Covered: 402.2 mi (647.6 km) |
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