Denali 2

Sunday, July 18, 2010
Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States
Today we took an eight hour Tundra Wilderness Tour through Denali National Park. This tour took us 60 miles of the 93 mile road that goes into the park. The road starts out as a nice blacktop road and then changes to a two lane gravel road and finally to a one lane road with many sharp s-curves. Our driver and toured guide kept it very interesting with the knowledge and humor. Not only were the view spectacular but we saw an abundance of wildlife consisting of 1 red fox, 4 caribou, 4 wolves, 12 grizzly bear, and 26 dall sheep. One of the groups of bear that we saw was a mom with two cubs that were probably about 2 years old. While we were watching them we saw a male bear approaching them from one direction and a couple hikers heading toward them from the other direction. What made this interesting was the panic that it put the mom and cubs in as they are naturally afraid of humans and the male bears will not mate with a female as long as she has cubs with her (usually they stay with her for about 3 years) so he will try to kill the cubs so he can mate with the female. We were able to stop along the side of the road and watch this unfold for a while as there were no other buses coming up behind us. The only we did not see on this tour which we had hoped to see was a moose as we have not seen one yet on this whole trip with the exception of a split second sighting on our way to the jet boat ride. Tonight we went to the Music of Denali Dinner Theater for supper and a show that presents the story of the first people who hiked to the summit of Mt. McKinley (Denali). The food was great and the entertainment was excellent.
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Comments

Sandra
2010-07-28

Wow that's a ton of bears and wolves-cool. If you haven't seen a moose yet when you get back to Shanna maybe taking the trail ridge road all the way to the otherside where we saw moose will bring you some luck.

lindaonthego
2010-08-01

Or the hike to "The Pool." That's where we saw the moose, and he/she had reportedly been there the day before too, so it must be the hangout place. It's not too far up the path in a little pond where it likes to stand in the water and eat. Good luck moose hunting!

2025-05-23

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