Denali National Park

Sort of the same shot from previous day when mountain was shrouded in clouds, today it is smoke.

Us at the entrance sign.

Sign that was recently replaced because the bears eat them. This one is already chewed on the corners. The rangers "spike" the signs with nails to try to keep the sign intact.

Scary roads in the park. Very narrow and winding with steep drop offs. Our bus overheated and we had to sit and let it cool off for a bit. South face of Mt McKinley is on the right while the North face summit is clouded over. It is in the lowest point of the mountains and might be mistaken for clouds if you don't look carefully.

Denali is a rather unique because it is a wilderness park. The rangers do nothing to change what happens in the park. Only park buses are allowed to drive to the end of the road. We went part way (60 miles) into the park. We did see a lot of wild life but not close enough to get a good photo. We saw: ptarmigan, Arctic squirrels (looks like a prairie dog), caribou (reindeer), moose, grizzlies with babies, Dall sheep and the bonus wolves! It was a long day. We ended up on a bus full of tour people. We were the only non tour people. Many of the people were drinking through most of the 8 hour trip so were pretty obnoxious by the end. That part of the trip was bad but the tour itself was good. We did get to see both faces of the mountains. We only got within 30 miles of the mountain itself. Our best pictures were from around 45 miles away. We were very lucky to see as much wild life as we did and to see any of the mountain. Our guide told us that on average the mountain is visible only 7 days a month. Another neat fact, the park only gets around 15 inches of combined rain and snow run off a year. On the other side, where we were camping it gets much more. We had showers at the campground but it was very nice at the park.