We took our time getting around on Monday, but we finally made it out to the park. We were kind of looking for animals, but mostly just enjoying the scenery. The park’s visitor center had a couple of movies on we watched. The first one was about the history of dog mushing in Denali, and it was fascinating. The park has the only active dog mushing crew left in the NPS, and the dogs are used throughout the winter months to support scientific and enforcement tasks. They are very proud of their dogs known for being the old style, big freighter dogs instead of the smaller racing style. The second film was basically just a travelogue of the park in all four seasons with breathtaking photography. The center was a zoo, filled with people who all seemed to think standing in the middle of a walkway was appropriate behavior. The park store was worse. It was pretty small, and it was very crowded. Then again, we didn’t get there until around noon!
We decided to drive the 15 mile section of Park Road accessible to cars. Lovely scenery, but we really didn’t take any pictures. Then we saw Mount Denali had decided to show herself! I took 15 photos, but I will only show 3. She is about 75 miles away from us here, and my little point and shoot was at its limits, but she is definitely there.
Everyone I have talked to about seeing “The Mountain” was right: she is big, she is beautiful, and people just do a lot of staring with their jaws open. I know I did.
After seeing Denali, we went back to the motorhome with big smiles on our faces. We had a caravan travel briefing about how to get into our campground in Anchorage (complicated!) and places we might want to see along the way. We then caught a bus to the Cabin Night Dinner Theater a few miles south of the park. The food was pretty good, and the show was fun. It was a series of vignettes about life in early Alaska with a very talented group of singer/actors. Not at all vaudeville like the Palace theater in Anchorage. This was very professional. I highly recommend!
Today we got a bit of surprise when we woke up – huge fluffy snowflakes! Here is an iPhone video I took.
The temperature was 33 on our weather station. And guess what? We had an ATV ride scheduled for today! We made sure we had warm clothes and rain gear. We also went to the local grocery store in Healy, just north of our place, to get some perishables. Kevin ended up going back to the park store to buy a knit cap, but the weather ended up being gorgeous by the time we got to the ride location at 1:00.
We were pretty tired from bad sleep and the ride, so we came back to the motorhome, changed clothes (I took a warm shower too), then went to dinner. Best meal of the trip so far was at Prospectors Pizza in Denali Park. We had fried ravioli for an appetizer, then their Gold Rush pizza. We had 2 pieces of our 13” brick oven pizza left over! But we did find room for crème brûlée for me (there is always room for crème brûlée) and a chocolate cheesecake for Kevin. It was really outstanding.
We heard Denali was showing her face again, so back to the park we went. However the cloud cover and very flat conditions meant it was impossible to photograph. After the previous day, we were satisfied with our memories. We did enjoy seeing park staff or volunteers out walking with young sled dogs beginning their training. We passed 6-7 of them, but we only took pictures of this photogenic young lad.
Tomorrow Anchorage.