8/28/12 Denali Alaska

Today was going to be a long day as we had planned to take the Denali park shuttle bus all the way to the end, 92 miles. Doesn't seem bad but this is a 12 hour trip total so it was going to be a long day on a school bus. So basically the park has two modes of transportation into the park a shuttle or tour. They take the exact same routes, as there is only one road, but the tour gives you a box lunch and a guide. Well the price for the shuttle is $50 all the way in and a tour is $169 per person. From reading information the shuttle is the way to go as you can get off anywhere walk the road pick up another shuttle, come back on another shuttle if you don't want to go further in, and the driver is almost a guide. The driver talks gives info but isn't really dedicated to do that so I equate it to a junior guide they are knowledgeable but sometimes they don't have little details but good enough for everything we asked on our bus. So that is a little detail on what we had planned to do here in the park.

Up and at em at 6:00 am to get ready as we needed to be at the bus stop at 7:30. Took the short walk from the campground to the stop and waited there. Seemed like we were going to have a crappy day weather wise as it was raining on the walk up and chilly. But as it came time to leave the clouds started to break and we were hopeful of better things to come. Well it go sunny with partly cloudy sky's and was perfect cool weather for the long journey. We also had a unique experience as it had snowed at night in the upper elevations so this capped all the mountains and put a dusting down lower. As for the trip we saw a moose, grzlly with 2 cubs twice, dall sheep, and caribou. Some were very close but others were super far away so difficult to see but good to catch a lot of variety. Because to the way the clouds were forming we could not see mount McKinley so hopefully the next day on the drive home. This is something that you have to wait around for days and we don't have that in the plans.

It was a great day came back after 12-13 hours on the trip made spaghetti and eat. I got a case of beer which cost 18 dollars to cap off the night and was passed out by 930ish. Been good up here but looks like we are going to move south to get onto the kenai pennesula tomorrow for a lot of our planned trips. This is a huge park and see why people can come up here and stay for a long time just backpacking the wilderness. There are very few trails in the park so most of the time people just walk around on there own path seeing the wildlife and nature at its most purest.