Denali Day 2: Well I have forgotten what day and date it is and so has Kaff so I will just give it the flick. It was a quiet night in camp last night. trying to preserve battery power and gas as this Camp ground is in the National Park and has zero facilities except expensive ones. We were both so tired from 2 nights of Aurora viewing in Fairbanks, so we were in bed at 2000. No heater so it was warmer in bed.
It was an early start today when my alarm went off an hour early 0500 instead of 0600 but I got dressed in bed as without the heater we were freezing . Cereal for breakie and we decided to walk across to the Wilderness centre where we were catching a bus. All good until we took a wrong path and had to turn around and start again. We made it time though to catch the Eielson Shuttle which is like an old school bus and it takes about 4 hours to travel 66 miles into the Eielson Centre in the middle of the park. If you spot an animal you had to yell "Stop, Moose @ 10 O'clock" and our driver would stop and point out the said animal and we would take photos. It was a great day, we started out seeing 2 moose or in my case I got one set of Antlers and a brown spot on a hill. So tick tick for me. Next we saw Grizzly bear, then another and another, then a Young Wolf and then there was a critter the driver had never seen before..The people behind me called it a Hoares Marmot, it was fat and fluffy which is unlike a marmot. Other people also called it bear food. Throughout the trip out there we stopped and dropped people who we either hiking or camping, we also picked up people and dropped them further down the road . Not for Kaff & I we just enjoyed sitting taking photos, buggar walking.
We had reststops thoughout the drive and just before we got to Eielson we found a mother Grizzly and cub quite close to the road so managed to get some great photos, about a thousand of them !! They had to drag me kicking away from the window to let other people have a go. Pulling into Eielson we have a 30 minute break for lunch and photos of Mt McKindlay but due to massive cloud cover we couldnt even see Mt McKindlay let alone take a photo of it. In the centre they had a quilted work of art of the mountains and flowers and animals which I want my mother to make for me. It was awesome.
By the time we got back on the bus the mother bear or Sow as they are called by people in the know, and her cub had wondered to the hill just near where the buses were loading, to there was a frenzy of photographers with 3 foot telescopic lenses all running about like they had ADD... Fortunately the ranger came out and hussled everyone back into the safety zone.
On the trip home everyone was exhausted, it had been such a hard day. I think my neck grew an extra 3 inches from drooping ! We saw another Grizzy with two cubs on the way back and a Golden Eagle as well as some Big Horn sheep or Dall sheep as I have been told ... It also rained half the way home thankfully it had stopped by the time we got back and we didnt get wet walking back to the camper.
Last night in the wilderness of Denali and hopefully we will have power and wifi in Anchorage tomorrow.