Monday:
This is our week at Denali. We had to get up super early (6 am) so that we could be at the park before 7:30 am to be in line for our tour bus ride into the park (you can’t drive in past mile 17.) It was a cool, damp, and foggy morning.
We ended up with a great bus driver (Tina) who gave us a lot of information and details in her talk along the drive. She was also very good at getting us close to the wildlife along the road and explaining animal behavior patterns.
We had purchased the bus ride out to Wonder Lake which is most of the way into the park, up to mile 82. Round trip this tour takes about 11 hours.
Along the way we were able to see several grizzly bears, a couple herds of caribou and ptarmigan. No moose today. At the Eielson Lodge there were reports of a couple wolves chasing some caribou down the river plain, but we did not witness it ourselves. Also at the lodge is where you can see the Denali peak, but the mountain was shrouded in fog.