The drive to Denali National Park was gorgeous!

We stopped at a campground that was known for it’s store and mounted animals. They have a stuffed polar bear.

We made it to Denali!

We had a campsite at Savage River Campground in Denali National Park for 3 nights. This was almost as far into the park as anyone is allowed to drive in a personal vehicle.

We took a 14 hour bus trip to mile 92 in the park. The pictures below are in order of the scenery we saw on this road that was mostly a primitive drive. We didn’t see any animals the first half of the trip so were kind of disappointed. On top of that, it was too cloudy to see Mount Denali (McKinley). However, our driver Craig kept us entertained the entire time with stories and information about the park and the animals in it. We had some really narrow roads with deep drop offs but he has driven this road 1,100 times so I had to trust him!

On the return trip, we saw many, many animals. Some were too far away for good pictures but we saw Ptarmigan, Golden Eagle, Caribou cows, Caribou bulls, Moose bulls, Dall sheep and Grizzly bears.

After we stopped for lunch, we were treated to a dog mushing talk and demonstration. Below, the dogs are in “summer training”mode.

The next day, we drove into the town of Denali to fuel up, since we would be leaving the next day. The park and town were dark due to a power outage so we drove to the next town. It was out of power also! We found out a raven had flown into a transformer and knocked out power in two transformers. It took about 3 hours to get power back.

We stopped for a beverage Prospectors Pizzeria and alehouse in Denali.