Denali

The tack on to the cruise was to visit Denali National Park and Preserve, formerly known as Mount McKinley National Park. The park is centered around the highest mountain in North America and means “the high one” at over 20,300 feet or 6,100 kilometers. The park has expanded over the years and in doing so, returned to the original native name of Denali. It’s over 6 million acres - larger than the state of New Hampshire! As we’ve learned, Alaska is the largest state and about 1/5 the size of the entire continental United States!

The landscape includes forest, tundra, and glaciers. We didn’t see glaciers as I think we’ve seen plenty already and would require a more extensive and adventurous trip.

The national park only allows private cars to enter until mile 15, and had partnered with Aramark for bus tours. I chose the basic Tundra Wilderness Tour. The road goes out to Wonder Lake which is mile 92 which takes about 11 hours round trip due to the low speed of traffic. The tour didn’t go out that far, but due to a rock slide that damaged the road at around mile 45, we get turned around at mile 43. The road that slid was built on permafrost and had been melting. It had required frequent maintenance, but recently the Park service decided it should be closed. They are hoping to have the road repairs and a bridge that would avoid the road sliding issues completed by 2026.

When you book, you only get to choose morning or afternoon and you hear two days before your actual pickup time. They come get you in this beige bus and treat you with a snack box and water bottle. My mom, aunt, and brother were stoked not to do much walking and our driver and nearby passengers were very considerate. Our obligatory group photo and bus experience:









Also the range of pickup could be across a few hours and I felt like a midafternoon pickup would waste the day. The earliest pick up can be 5 am, but I learned our pickup time was 6:35 am which I guess was better to see the animals!

Thanks to the over 50 pairs of eyes on board, folks yelled out “3 o’clock, 9 o’clock”, as we spotted various wildlife. In addition to navigating hairpin turns and single lane passages, our driver had a long range video camera and streamed to monitors on the bus. Side by side, you can see my iPhone photo and an image of the monitor of the caribou and brown bear below - the quality was spectacular:





We also saw a female moose…



A grouse…



Dall sheep or thinhorn sheep…apparently these are all male or rams, so it’s a bachelor party!



Several moose… you can see the red on the antlers on the left one on the monitor. The antlers regrow each Spring nourished by blood vessels. The red color will rub off over time…



But the highlight was definitely the mama bear with her three cubs eating berries and making their way down!



Although it was cloudy, we got to enjoy the fall colors as it will turn brown and winter white just in a few weeks. As such, we were told this is a unique time to be here…

















It was too cloudy to see Denali, but we still really enjoyed the experience and decided not to continue on the bus back to the hotel, but stopped in to the Visitor Center. We perused the exhibits before seeing an 18 minute film about the park. 

Here you can see the red line which was our road by bus; the white range is the Denali mountain peak nestled amongst the other mountains; and the white line being the main highway:





My very own antlers for Justin - my mom remarked my fingers are too tiny to even see:



For lunch, we beat the rush at the café and ordered cheeseburgers, seafood chowders, chicken panini’s, and French fries. This was timed perfectly as we were finishing, our hotel shuttle came to the Visitor Center. We looped into town, the sister hotel of the Grande Denali Lodge which is Denali Bluffs, and then back to our hotel.

As we were beat, we all napped and motivated around 6 pm to head into town. We window shopped and enjoyed some chai lattes as we tried to get more steps in.



We ultimately decided to eat at Prospector’s Pizzeria and Alehouse and enjoyed spinach and artichoke dip, Greek salad, and various pizzas. I also ordered a cider from the 49th State Brewery:







After dinner, we returned to our hotel perched on Sugarloaf mountain for our last night in the 49th state!