On Thursday we woke early to catch our 6:30 AM bus at the Denali visitor’s center. Our destination: the Eielson Visitor Center, some 60 miles into the heart of Denali National Park and Preserve. Denali is unique in our national park system in its management of visitor traffic. Only one road leads into the park (fun fact: this 92-mile Park Road took 17 years to build), and past mile marker 15 at Savage River, only official park buses are allowed.

The drive to Eielson is not a short one—about four hours one way—but the vistas and wildlife sightings make it well worth it. We crossed numerous rivers fed by glacial melt. And we learned from Anna’s geology book that the rivers are so wide because glaciers in the past and runoff currently deposit rocks and silt along the way, which the waters then braid their way through.

Kate’s moose antler was just the beginning. We spotted a dozen or so caribou (fun fact #2: a reindeer is just a domesticated caribou) along the ride and then, just a few miles before our arrival at Eielson, we spotted what we’d all been dreaming of: a real live grizzly! And not only that, it was a female grizzly with two cubs feeding alongside her! The bears were just on the side of the road, so we stopped the bus for a while to get some photos. The opportunity to see a grizzly bear in the wilds of Alaska was a real highlight.

Once we arrived at the Eielson Visitor Center, we climbed off the bus, stretched our legs, and took a minute to absorb the stunning views. Denali stood proud out to the southwest, surrounded by so many more massive mountains. We needed to get the blood flowing again, so we descended from the visitor’s center onto the Gorge Creek Trail, which would take us to one of the very glacial waterways we’d seen so many of on the way in.

Once down in the lowlands, we took off our packs, circled up, and ate our sandwiches, hummus, carrots, and other goodies, heeding the trail sign and staying ever vigilant of our surroundings.

Vigilance does not preclude fun, though, so we tested out our limberness and linguistic abilities to spell out “PUTNEY.” Now that’s what we call spirit.

We then returned to the parking lot to catch our bus out of the park. The group was pretty zonked after the ride in and the hike, and we caught everyone except Ajay snagging some zzz’s on the way out. They deserved it!

— Kevin & Anna

https://youtu.be/L27Uo15cCvI