August 11 - Denali Day 5 - A Great Bus Ride in the Park

This is probably going to be our longest post with lots of pictures.  We were lucky to see the mountain and lots of wildlife - thank goodness for digital cameras.  The pictures are full size so all of the detail is there.

We booked the 6:30 bus for the 66 mile ride to the Eielson stop on the Park Road, hoping to see more wildlife and hoping Denali would be peaking out of the clouds.  This is what the bus ride looks like.  They are essentially school buses and the road sides are pretty steep.

It started off looking promising.  About 15 miles down the road, the bottom of the mountain was visible, so the driver stopped for some pics, just in case it would be our last chance.  It was the only peak we've had of it for a week and it looked huge, even at 70 miles away!

A few miles later, we saw our first bear, quite a ways off, but it was a grizzly.

Then our first Dall Sheep.  They are usually a long way off because they hang out up on the mountain sides.

Then another grizzly.  This one had an itch to scratch.

A few miles later and we saw these caribou with their calves.

Then at the next stop where we could see Denali, there it was, all but the very top.  Time for lots of pictures!

And a panorama shot...

We passed Panorama Point (pictures of that further down) and finally arrived at the Eielson Visitor Center.  By now, the whole mountain was visible - they said the first time since July 28.

 

We were so excited that the mountain was out that we decided to upgrade our bus ticket to go further out to the Wonder Lake stop, another 22 miles at mile 88 on the Park Road.  Along the way, we got to see our first big bull moose.

By the time we got to Wonder Lake, the clouds were starting to roll in, covering some of the mountain.

It was nice to see more of the park though.  It's flat alpine country out this far, and we got to see some of the kettle lakes and Wonder Lake.

We got off the bus and hiked a mile up the road to the "reflecting pond".  If it's calm and the light is right, this is where people get the pictures of the mountain range reflecting off the water.  Some other folks there took our picture.

Time for the walk back to the bus stop.

The bus stopped at Eielson on the way back, so we ate the lunch we packed - no food to buy on the Park Road.  By now it was about 1:30.  We had hoped to get off the bus and do some hiking on the way back, but everything is so far away from the road, we wouldn't have had time to get to somewhere we couldn't already see.  Maybe next time.

A few miles after leaving Eielson, we stopped to watch this grizzly feeding on soap berries.  It was about 200 yards off the road to start with.  Not sure why they like them so much - to us humans, they taste like their name says.

 

Found itself a full bush of soap berries here!

The bear must have been tired from eating so much, it even laid down to eat.

 

Here's a short video of the bear scarfing down those soap berries.

This bear really gave us a show and kept coming towards the bus.  Then after the video, it crossed the road and walked the whole length of the bus and back.  Perfect!

Hard to beat that, but a couple miles later, we could see 4 bears feasting in one spot.  Someone counted seven.  There must have been plenty of berries for all of them so they tolerated each other.

Here are some views as we drove over Panorama Pass.  The mountains here are all painted all different colors from the soil and rocks.  Some pretty awesome views.  It shows how expansive this place is too.

We saw another brown bear up on the mountain side.  By now, we lost count of how many bears we saw - awesome!

And there were lots of Dall Sheep on the mountains.  Again, hard to get a real good picture, but this one has about a 3/4 turn on his horns.

As we got back into the wooded area near the Teklanika Campground, a lynx walked right by the bus.  These are not seen very often, so we got lucky again.  The pic is a little blurry because of the zoom and quick shutter finger, but his pointy ears and stubby tail still show up.

We even got a close up view of the Alaska state bird, this Willow Ptarmigan hamming it up for the camera.  Must taste like chicken - remember that northern Alaska town named Chicken and how it got its name?

On the paved section, a lot of cars and buses were stopped to see this big bull moose right along the road.  All we could do was stick the camera out the window and get a quick picture before it had enough of people and headed back into the woods out of sight.  Amazing how an animal so big can disappear so easily and so fast.

After the bus trip, it was time for some pizza and a PBR.  Then we had to drive north to Healy for a couple of pictures.  We drove on this road a couple nights ago as far west as we could, trying to see some wildlife.  Matt thought the name of the road rung a bell then, but couldn't think of what it was about until a day later.  So a little bit of trivia - does anyone know what it's significant for?

 
Here are some clues, parked just down the road at the Denali Brewing Co. in Healy.

Here's the answers.  Stampede Road/Trail was the road Christopher McCandless hiked on back into the bush and found a bus to live in.  This replica of the bus was used in the movie "Into the Wild" (click on the movie name for more info).  The story does not have a happy ending.  Kinda erie to drive down this same road, not knowing where we were really headed.  But now we do.

Back at the camp, time for a campfire and catching up on emails.  Roughing it aren't we!