Alaska P 18

One thing about getting up at 5:30 AM in Denali is there is plenty of daylight at this time of the year, so it is easier psychologically speaking, but still a physical task when you have gone to bed at 11:30 PM after a busy day! When we arrived at the breakfast dining room, we found all our Model T companions there from down the road. Their accommodations didn’t provide an early breakfast, so they were shuttled to our place where they also would catch the bus with us to go into the back country of Denali.

The bus was on time and we departed at 6:15 in a bus full (almost) with Antique Ford Tourists. The drive to Denali Park entrance was a matter of only nine miles. From there we would take six hours to get to the end of a gravel road back in the park. We would stop anytime someone saw and animal so that we could observe and photograph it. It was an unhurried bus ride. The fist 20-some miles was paved and was a retrace of the drive we made yesterday. In that portion, we didn’t see any animals. There were scheduled places along the route for “rest stops.” These were generally 90-minutes apart.

Our first sighting was of two brown bears off to the left side of the bus. We were on the right side, so we were at a disadvantage for this one. I found that my still camera wasn’t very suitable for this type of photography as it had too wide an angle on the lens. The telephoto capability wasn’t up to getting me a good picture, therefore those shown here will leave much to be desired. On the other hand, the video camera’s telephoto lens brought the animals in close, however, it was difficult to hold the camera steady enough at times to get good footage. I’ll have to wait till we get home to really assess the quality of the video. In all, we saw considerable wildlife: bears, caribou, a golden eagle, ptarmigan, Dahl sheep — although too far away to see any really distinguishing features, even through my binoculars.

The view of Mt. McKinley was at a much closer range, but the mountain was shrouded with lots of clouds. On the return trip it was completely obscured. (During the two years that I was stationed in Anchorage in the early 1950’s, I flew between Anchorage and Fairbanks weekly — sometimes more frequently. During that period, I don’t think that I saw Mt. McKinley totally clear of clouds more than two or three times!) Yesterday’s view was the best that I have seen it.

At the end of the trip in, we stopped at a lodge for a lunch and a selection of activities for an hour. Joann and I chose to view a video related to medical problems while climbing Mt. McKinley. It was good photography and we learned lots about the body’s reaction to the cold, the altitude and the exertion of climbing at high altitude.

On the return trip, some of us dozed a bit and were glad to finally get off the bus which had given us an very interesting, but bumpy, dusty ride into the back country.

Tomorrow we have a trip of about 150 miles to the village of Talkeetna, the jumping off point for most of the attempts to climb Mt. McKinley. This will be an easy run and we will not leave very early. I hope to post this and other Journal pages before we leave.