AK day 3

We continued on further into the park on the third day in Denali.  This is done by purchasing a ticket to ride the park bus system (the only way to get past mile 15 of the 90 mile park road).  It takes several hours to travel into the park as the road is gravel, rugged, and slow.  Sweet.  Anyhow, we chose to head in all the way to the Eilson Visitor Center, which is near the bottom of Denali itself (Mt McKinley to those who disregard it's proper native name- we European types are good at barging in and claiming/renaming things which are already established).  Our route took us past a lot of fantastic alpine tundra scenery full of small to very large wildlife.  Caribou, Dall Sheep, Grizzlies, Marmots, Moose, Ptarmigan, Fox, and lots of flying things I couldn't define.  It was so great to see a part of the earth that is mainly undeveloped (save for the one gravel road we traveled to the visitor center- which has little services of any kind other than educational displays and restrooms.)  The rest of the park is pretty much as it always has been for this era.  We didn't get to see Denali, which was shrouded in cloud.  We were told that it had only been visible 4 days in the past two months.  It's typical to have to make several trips to the Park to see the mountain, since it's cloudy/raining much of the summer.  It's hard to imagine we were standing under a 20,000 ft mountain and couldn't tell, but that's about it.  I really want to go back and see it hulking over me; sunset is the dream.  

A hike down a gulch by the Eilson Visitor Center revealed that we were in moose territory:

Other hikers passing up through the brush back to the visitor center:

Never seems to be a "quick" way to hike in AK; good thing Alison has a purple backpack:

Don't let the expression fool you, I like some kinds of hardship, liking bushwhacking AK!

Overlooking braided rivers flowing off the Polychrome Glaciers:

Alison taking in Polychrome Pass.  The world is bigger than us my friends....

Polychrome Pass area:

Difficult to spot, but here you have it- a mother Grizzly and two cubs...look for the blond dots...

View where you could normally look up and see 20,000 ft of mountain.  Not this time...