I have pared down my pictures from the first day (bus ride from Teklanika campground out to the end of the road) from about 170 to 90, and that doesn’t even count any from day 2, which was awesome in its own way. That together with not enough time to seriously post, has me blocked. So in the interest of breaking through the block and being able to continue blogging the trip–here are a mere handful of pictures from Denali.
A few mountains. None of Denali totally out, but equally beautiful in their own way.
That is, I think but can’t be sure, Denali peeking (peaking-heh heh, can’t resist, many of my students didn’t know the difference) through the clouds, with Wonder Lake below.
Some animals. We didn’t see a lot–my personal theory as to why was because it was unusually sunny and warm for Denali–but we did see a few.
An owl. My first thought was, what is an owl doing out in broad daylight, and then I realized that it doesn’t really have much choice at this time of year.
A handful of caribou. This one was in the road, a strategy they use to try to escape the flies and mosquitoes, poor things. It was about a quarter of a mile before it let us by.
This was the most magnificent one, except we didn’t really get to see it.
For a few exciting moments we thought it was going to get up, but . . .
. . that was as far as he went.
And another trying to escape the bugs, this one following a river down below the road.
A bear. We got a pretty good look at this one, so I have several pictures.
A trio of bears–a mama and her two cubs from last year. They were further away, so,the pictures aren’t as clear. The white bits that look like they could be rocks are the bears 😄.
A Dall sheep. We saw it toward the end of the day–I’d given up on them, but since apparently we have them to thank for the park’s creation, I’m glad I got to see it.
And finally, a moose. I saw this on day two, not on the bus ride, but he (she?) should be included with the animals.
That’s zoomed in, for those of you concerned about my sense and safety.
A couple more pictures from the bus day. The driver encouraged us to go in to the visitor’s center to see the quilt, and it is indeed marvelous.
I thought it was beautiful how she used stitching as well as color and pictures to achieve her effects.
Proof that I went all the way to the end of the road.
The bus driver made sure we all got our picture taken by the sign.
The second day, which had been predicted to be rainy, was instead beautiful, so I got the bike down, and took three rides, one with CJ in the morning, a longer one by myself in the afternoon, and another with CJ in the evening. That’s when we saw the moose. I had been debating with myself as to how much further to go, and was CJ up for more, but it’s so beautiful out, etc., when I spotted it about 100 yards down the road. After taking its picture, I did the sensible thing and turned around to go back.
Here are a few more pictures from day two, which in many ways I enjoyed more than day one. It was lovely to be out in the beauty and the quiet by myself, and to be able to stop and gaze whenever I wanted to. As you can tell, I fell in love with the landscapes with the little spiky trees scattered across the green valleys.
I now have two major wishes for another trip to the north country: to drift the Yukon river from Dawson City to Eagle, Alaska, and to ride my bike from Teklanika campground to the visitor’s center and get the bus back. You can do that with a regular bike, but I don’t know if they’ll take an ebike on the busses.
Some flowers. Anyone who wants to ID them for me, have at it. One of them is fireweed, my friend Barbara, who is also in Alaska on a tour, tells me. Or maybe all three tall spiky ones? But what the white stuff in the first picture is, I have no idea.
And finally, as I was stowing things for leaving, this little guy came and nibbled on something in the fire pit. Not anything I left, I assure you. Probably a snowshoe rabbit. Or hare? Though it looks more like a rabbit to me.
As I was driving south yesterday, I got one last shot at Denali.
So–imagine what a post that did the park full justice would be like. Still have lots more pictures, but maybe it’s just as well I had to be more selective.
Some comments:
1. “My first thought was, what is an owl doing out in broad daylight, and then I realized that it doesn’t really have much choice at this time of year.”
Cracked up when I read that.
2. Some of those purple flowers look a bit like the flowers I saw along my recent walk across South Korea. Did those flowers traverse the old, disappeared land bridge with the ancient Asians (or fly across with ancient Asian birds)?
3. That cloud-shrouded photo of Denali is quite humbling. I had a numinous experience passing by gigantesque Mount Rainier on my way south from Blaine, Washington, back in 2008. This is just as impressive.
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Re #2: my friend said it’s called fireweed because it’s one of the first plants to re-colonize after a fire, which implies it’s good at distributing it’s seeds,in an opportunistic fashion. So I’d expect a wide distribution, one way or,another.
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I thought I put in a “close” HTML tag, but I apparently ended up boldfacing everything. I meant to put only your quote in bold. Sorry!
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‘s OK. None of the actual boldface made it across the digital divide, only the HTML symbols did. So no yelling occurred.
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The white flowers are the blossoms of Cotton Grass…ubiquitous in the SubArctic, Arctic, and high Arctic. One of my favorites. Nice photos! I’m glad you had such gorgeous weather.
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Carla? Is that you?
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