Denali National Park

On our way from Fairbanks to Denali the weather was still fine, providing us with some good views onto Mount Denali from around 120 miles distance. Even that far away this is a huge bugger! Apparently it's the highest mountain on earth if the actual elevation from the base is measured , some 16.000 feet.

 Mount Denali

We reached the National Park in pouring rain, however and the forecast for the next day wasn't much better. As you can't travel through the park in your own vehicle and the trips in the shuttle buses are usually fully booked at this time of the year, we jumped on a bus for an 11 hour return trip the next morning. Forecast was for clouds with a 30% chance of rain. This turned out to be rain all day. Anyway, as the bus driver mentioned, at least if we saw some wildlife on this trip, it would be close :-). In the end the trip was quite enjoyable despite the rain. We saw some grizzly bears, moose, marmots, golden eagle, lots of mozzies, but not Mt. Denali.

 Two huge moose antlers hooked together after head-butting. They couldn't separate so both died 

After sitting out the rain for one day at the camp ground we tried again the day after. And boy, did we get lucky! Forecast was again for a 20% chance of rain, but no rain was to be seen that day. We did a shorter trip of about 9 hours and were just spoiled by wildlife sightings. 16 grizzlies, sometimes a sow with cubs,  caribou, moose, a wolf, mountain goats, the eagles, marmot, you name it, all were there to be seen. Claudia and I did a 2 hour hike up a mountain with amazing views onto Mt.Denali and the surrounding landscape.
This was Denali as good as it gets! What a day.....

So, the next day we were happy to leave for Anchorage.