Alaska Excursions: Denali Natural History Tour

This excursion came as part of the land tour, and it was our only chance to really experience the Denali National Park. As you can see in the pics below, we continued to have very cloudy weather with some light rain. While we were at the Mt. McKinley lodge, we learned that the mountain (which is also called Denali, the name Alaskans prefer) is only fully visible 30% of the time. So far, we'd only seen the base of the mountain, even when the sky cleared up in other places, because it is tall enough to create its own weather system. Despite our hopes, we did not see the peak during our tour of the park, either.

As we drove toward the visitor center, we spotted another moose, this one with two calves!

After a brief stop for restrooms and some quick souvenir purchases at the Welcome Center, we were off.

I had been expecting to pretty much to stay on the bus, so I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few planned stops along the way. Our first stop was at this rustic cabin:

Later, a park ranger hopped on to give us some info about Denali:

After that, we heard some stories from this charming Native Alaskan (I don't remember her tribe, unfortunately...). She told us about a time a bear came and rattled her little station here on the mountain as well as some history of her family, describing how things in the area have changed from her grandfather's time to the present.

Here are some more pics of the beautiful scenery:

While we really enjoyed this tour, if Mark and I ever find ourselves back in Denali, I think we'd like to spend more time there, doing some exploring of our own on foot to see it from a different perspective.