Wildlife in the Wild

Without further ado, here are the best shots of the wildlife we saw on our Denali bus trip. Some of them are not of great quality, because while my camera's nice, it's not that nice. But it was absolutely amazing to see all these animals behaving as if we weren't even there. Truly the experience of a life time.


A female moose, sort of in the center of the picture. Not the most exciting shot, but this was the first wildlife we saw on the shuttle bus trip.

A pica, which looks like a mouse but is actually the smallest member of the rabbit family.

For some reason, I was having trouble getting the cropped image to upload. But if you look in the middle of the picture, you'll see some black specks, one right near the tree line and another laying down slightly below and to the left. Those are part of a wolf pack we saw. I will work on getting the cropped images up.

A big grizzly bear we spent about ten minutes watching. He was sort of just ambling along, chomping on bushes and berries. Our driver said it was probably a juvenile, and you can kinda see the radio collar around his neck.

A whole bunch of Dall sheep, just chilling, on the cliffs below Polychrome pass. There were about nine of them in all.

A mama moose and her calf, running across the hillside. That little guy was soooooo cute.

A lone wolf running for cover.

You can just make out the caribou standing along the ridge line. We actually saw tons of caribou, but some of those pictures were ones I also had trouble cropping. I also have a few of some big bull moose. If I'm able to solve the problem, I'll post when I can.

Up next, I'll be starting to show you my journey home, which if you followed my live blogging, you know took some, er, interesting turns. Also, I'll be at the National Book Festival in DC next weekend-always one of my favorite trips, and, as long as I get the hotels squared away, I'll be in Vermont on Columbus Day weekend with my grandma. 

The Great One

The Denali bus ride was definitely one (of the many) highlights of my time in Alaska. I have so many pictures from the park that it would be impossible to share them in just one post, if only because it takes my slow computer forever to load them. So I'll start today with some shots of the mountain itself, from all different places in the park.

Because Denali is such a high mountain, it makes its own weather and is often all clouded in. In fact, only 30% of park visitors usually get to see the peak clearly. This July, it was visible only one day from the Eielson Visitor's Center. So we were incredibly lucky to have some great views of it for two days in a row!

This was my first view, from along the Parks Highway near Nenana.

An even better view from another spot along the Parks Highway. Isn't amazing how, despite the fact that there are mountains all around you, Denali just dominates the sky?

This may have been my favorite view. I took this from Savage Campground at about 6 am. The way the clouds were, and the spruce trees, against the clear, stark white of the peaks, it was this breathtaking sight. The photos I took don't even come close to doing justice to the beauty of the acutal scene.

I love this shot for the juxtaposition of the colors. You can see the green plains in front of you, leading up to the rocky mountains, which are dominated by the snow-covered peaks of Denali itself.

I totally forget where this is, but it's not far from Eielson. Our bus driver told us this was a pretty iconic shot, with the road in the foreground. You can see that by this point, around 11 am, the mountain was already starting to cloud over.

The view from Eielson, with no zoom, from about 35 miles as the crow flies from the mountain.

This shot has some zoom, and I love again how it shows the different elevations.

A close-up of the summit.

That's me :-). I was a little frustrated because I was taking shots for everyone around me, most of which came out really nice, and this is the best of the ones people took for me. It was windy and of course it's hard to photograph a white mountain against a light sky, but still, I was disappointed. However, that didn't last long, because I was mostly overjoyed to have seen such natural beauty.

Up next (by this weekend), my Denali wildlife shots. I will warn you now, most of them are grainy and blurry, but you can still tell what kind of animal it was. So stay tuned!!!