Alaska Trip Day 4 – Denali

Friday, July 21, 2023

About 9am we met at the McKinley Lodge for breakfast in a small coffee bar. About 10:40am, we left on a bus to go on our first excursion, Tundra Wilderness Tour of Denali National Park. The purpose of this excursion is to see the mighty Mount Denali (used to be called Mt McKinley) and many of the animals that use the park as their habitat. The tour lasted until about 4pm when we returned to the lodge.

Some of the pictures of Denali follow. It is the tallest mountain in North America, and the second tallest mountain in the world. Denali is 20,310 ft high, and is covered in snow all year round. It stands out above all the other mountains in the area with its bright white color that covers the entire mountain.

These pictures show Denali about 80 miles away. We do not see the base of Denali due to other mountains between us and it. Today was a superb day to view Denali. Most days alot of Denali is hidden due to clouds. Our tour guide, Kevin, was so good to inform us of so many details of Denali and the park. He told us today was very unusual. And he does tours 6 days a week. He shared with us that less than 5% of the tour attendees get to see what we saw today… the entire Denali mountain! God has blessed us with the perfect day to see his creation… Denali!

Our guide warned us we may not see all 4 of the major animals that live in the park… Moose, Bears (brown grizzlies and black), Caribou, and Dall Sheep. The fifth would have been wolves, but their existence have practically gone extinct in the park. We didn’t see any moose, but did see several caribou, a brown grizzley bear, and some sheep. Some of the animals were too far off to make a good picture, but our guide had a video camera with great zoom. So we saw closeup views on a TV monitor in the bus. We took some pics of the monitor… and they were a little grainy.

The tour was a highlight for us. Our guide was the best. The rest of the photos show the bus we were on, the roads we traveled, the views, the foliage, and us.

Once returning to our lodge, we decided to go to eat supper at The Grizzly Burger. Hamburgers and Fish Sandwiches were very good. Renee got a Reese Peanut Butter Shake that she had no problem finishing off.

After dinner we returned to the cabin and did some computer work on this blog. Then Renee and I went down behind the cabin to check out the Nenana River flowing right behind our cabin. The water was really cold and flowing fast. The time was 9:30pm. Check out the mountain shades.