A few more shots of the lodge where we stayed in Denali:

The main lodge.

The lounge in our building that had a very nice coffee bar. We would sit here after dinner or wait for our shuttle.

The view from the lounge.

A couple of shops in the compound.

Nothin’ but moose.

I loved all the “log cabin” architecture.

Black petunias! A first for me.

So, in order to view Denali National Park, you have to ride old school buses run by the National Park Service:

My sons rode this type of bus when they were in elementary school.

Here’s a long shot of another bus. There weren’t too many on the road–that’s how they keep traffic and pollution down. Private vehicles are only allowed on the first 15 miles of Denali Park Road.

Our first view of the park.

As you can see, it was really cloudy when we started out. I wasn’t happy about the light, but it got better later on, thankfully. We were just glad it didn’t rain.

At one of the stops you could pose with moose or caribou antlers. This was a different group–no one on our bus wanted to do it. Now I kind of wish I had. 🙂
Did you know that male moose shed their antlers every year? Our guide said they eventually dissolve.

Caribou. The only animal I got a photo of that day. We actually saw quite a bit of wildlife, but you had to have binoculars or a powerful zoom lens to see most of them. I had neither, but didn’t regret it. I would have been miserable carting a heavy lens around everywhere.
Our driver had a video camera hooked up to monitors on the bus so we could see everything closer.
It was a little creepy to see huge grizzly bears, then some hikers not too far away. What surprised me was the nearly-blond fur on the grizzlies. I thought they were all brown.

The green stuff is moss or tundra. I’ve never seen a place like this, ever.

Such a beautiful, unusual place.

More next week. I have a lot of photos to sort, so I’ll be doing this slowly. I blew up Photoshop yesterday trying to resize and watermark too many images at a time. Luckily it’s OK.

Hope your week’s going well so far.

{carole}