Denali Road Lottery No. 1

At Denali National Park, the park entrance is over 90 miles from the actual mountain, so normally to get there you need to take a 6 hour bus ride along the 90 mile, unpaved park road. For the last few days of the summer season, though, they do a lottery for a limited number of people to be able to drive the whole way in with their own vehicles. We've entered a few times in the past with no luck, but this time we entered 4 people from our family and ended up winning twice! So back in mid September we spent a weekend up at the park, and we were able to drive in on a Saturday and a Monday. We saw quite a lot of wildlife on our trip, so there are probably a lot more pictures here than anyone really wanted to see, but here you go.

Not too far in on the first day we saw this lone caribou.

We took this family picture at one of the many viewing areas.

We saw multiple herds of Dall sheep quite a ways up the hill.

Then we saw our first bear. It was fairly close, around 40-50 yards up the hill.

Generally we know when to stop and look for wildlife because there will be a handful of cars already stopped to look and take pictures. And bears caused more of a pileup than any other of the animals.  The park rangers referred to them as "bear-jams." And so many of the people there had these massive lenses on their cameras. Some people told us about how they rented lenses specifically for the trip.

There are plenty of nice vistas all through the park.

Here is the next bear we saw. The rangers say that once a bear gets within 25-30 yards away everyone should get back in their cars. This one approached us and got nearly that close for a moment, then turned back around.

As we mentioned in our post about our camping trip to Denali in July, the mountain creates its own weather systems surrounding it. So while it was fairly clear in most areas, it was pretty socked in around the main mountain range, though we did catch a few glimpses of the summit through breaks in the clouds.

Here's another bear, this one a little farther up the hill.

Two caribou.

We could tell the wind was really blowing over the tops of the peaks. This is one of the other peaks near Denali.

Here we are at Wonder Lake, near the end of the park road, where we had a nice picnic dinner. If it were clear you would see Denali right where the group of clouds is near the center of the image. This is also the first of several pictures I took of Marel breastfeeding in grand vistas.

And here's Caleb after his meal.

For some reason, the outhouse at Wonder Lake looked like this:

We never got a full, open view of Denali, but we could still see evidence of the massiveness.

This nearby peak was in full view and was impressive in its own right.

Here's Caleb enjoying the clouds.

Here's our attempt at a family picture. This is about as clear a view as we got of Denali. You can actually see the summit in this one, above and just slightly to the right of Celia.

As we were driving away we got a better view. Because of the way the wind was blowing the clouds were blocking the mountain from the direction of Wonder Lake, but it was fairly clear from the direction of the road on the way back out of the park.

We had a lovely view in our rear view mirrors on the way out.

This is apparently the most photographed view of Denali in the park.

Here's a few more caribou off in the distance.

A few more Dall sheep.

And 3 bears way down in a ravine.

So the tally for the day was 6 bears, 5 caribou, and 3 herds of Dall sheep.