Sunday, July 24, 2011

Talkeetna to Denali National Park

We got up early this morning for our planned flightseeing tour of Denali/McKinley.  Due to the rain and the clouds around the mountain, we weren’t able to take that tour.  As we are going back to Anchorage to have the RV worked on at Cummins, we scheduled another tour for the 30th on our way back.  Before leaving, Ken made reservations at the campground for our return trip and we were soon on our way toward Denali National Park in the rain.  The fireweed is getting closer to being fully blossomed but still has a ways to go yet.

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We crossed a bridge over Hurricane Gulch east of where we were on the train a couple of days ago.  Due to reflections the photos of that crossing didn’t turn out too well.  We also crossed the Nenana River a couple of times as seen in the next two photos.

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On our arrival at the park, we checked in at the campground and were able to secure a site in Riley Creek Campground for the night prior to heading in 30 miles to Teklanika in the morning.  We found a site, got set up, had our lunch and took a drive to the Savage River area which is the furthest we could drive in our truck without a special permit.  On our way back to the campground, there were vehicles parked along the road, so we stopped to see what was going on.  There was a caribou grazing by a dried up river near the road.  He had very impressive antlers so we got quite a few photos of him.

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Back at the RV, we just had a quiet evening.  We’ll plan on an early start in the morning to get to our next campground.

2 comments:

Sara said...

I like how you frame some of your photos with the vehicle in them. Gives us the feeling of really being there (looking out the window) instead of looking at a postcard.

Sharon Del Rosario said...

Wow! That caribou's rack is definitely impressive! And your pictures are great. Enjoy your stay in Denali. Hope the weather improves.