Alaska! (Part 5) -- September 2-15 -- Denali National Park

One last photo of the Northern Lights over Twin Lakes, along the Denali Highway; you can see the mist rising above the lake -- 

I had made reservations for 1 week at Teklanika Campground in Denali National Park starting September 8,  so as I had 6 days to kill I headed up to Fairbanks. It would turn out to be the furthest north that I would go. Sure, the Arctic Circle is only about 200 miles from Fairbanks, but it's more for bragging rights than anything else. Going north on the Parks Highway you can see the west side of the Alaska Range, the east side of which I'd seen a few days before in crystal-clear weather -- and now they were shrouded in clouds. Serendipitous once again...As I'd boondocked for a few days  with no hookups, and would have none again during my week in Denali, I splurged and spent 2 days in Fairbanks at an RV park. I asked the gal behind the reception desk for places nearby to hike and bird, and she said Creamer's Field. Charles Albert Creamer was a former chicken rancher from Washington State who moved to Fairbanks in 1927 and established Creamer's Dairy. He saved waste grains from his barn to feed migrating birds, and once he died the area was made a state sanctuary. It's mostly known as a rest stop for migrating Sandhill Cranes and the Sandhill Crane Festival, which had been held the week before I'd arrived. But there were still plenty of Cranes left in the fields -- 

After 2 days in Fairbanks I headed back south. Prior to this, the weather had been phenomenal -- clear and pretty warm for this time of the year. Now it was starting to feel more like fall, and the skies were cloudier. I spent 2 days at a campground in Anderson, about 8 miles off the Parks Highway, and it rained for the first time during the trip. It was now after the Labor Day holiday, so many campgrounds were closed and my overnight options fewer. Anderson is a one-road "town" and that road had a lot of potholes filled with water. I remember my stay as being overcast, dizzy and damp. And there were mosquitos -- not a lot, but enough to be bothersome. So I tried a little experiment. Mosquitos are attracted to the carbon dioxide in your exhaled breath, so I tried to breathe lightly and shallow when I was outside the trailer for short periods of time. It worked. So now I had Thermacell and light breathing to keep the skeeters at a minimum.  When I left the campground 2 days later I discovered that the one road through Anderson was closed because the potholes were being filled. I got out of the truck and asked a construction worker how to get around the road work. He gave me directions that flew out of my head as soon as he said them; too many "rights" and "lefts".  But I eventually made it back on the Parks Highway. I was due in to the Denali campground the next day, so I didn't go too far south, staying at the Tatlanika Trading Co. and RV Park -- 

And right along the Nenana River -- 

There weren't that many people at the RV site, so the next morning I was surprised and a bit concerned to see someone pulled up beside Discovery and leave his engine running and lights on. And there was no campground space where he had parked. He was there for about an hour, then left. Who knows what THAT was about. 

And now -- Denali National Park. I checked in, wandered around the visitor center, and heading in to Teklanika Campground. There's only one road through the park, which visitors can drive until the pavement ends. At that point, you can go further only if you have reservations at a campground further along the road.  Teklankia is the furthest you can go with a trailer or RV. The rules are, in a word, unique. Your vehicle has to stay at the campground. Your bus pass is only good for going further into the park; if you want to head back towards the park entrance, you have to pay. Which is why I took as many photos as I could along the road in. The views are, in a word, vast -- 

I saw one of the park buses at a pullout with the riders looking at something off to the south, so I parked and looked too; it was Denali -- 

Denali the mountain would loom over everything here, whether or not it was in view. I arrived at Teklanika Campground, which is along the Teklanika River -- 

And -- serendiptious once again -- I was able to stay at one of only 2 pull-through sites.

The campground was only half full at most. I had made reservations for 7 days, and from that first day onward I was wondering whether a week there would be enough. The day after I arrived at Teklanika I boarded one of the green park buses that go further into the park. You can be dropped off wherever you like, and the buses coming back will pick you up. The views of the landscape and wildlife can be great even from the bus, though I always had trouble lowering and closing the windows and lost more than a few shots due to that. But the drivers -- well, most of them -- will stop if you see something, such as these Dall Sheep; here's one instance when I lowered the window in time to get a good shot --

That's what is known as a "nursery", where the females watch over the lambs while the males are off in their own group, rarely associating with the females unless it's mating season. 

One of the scenic highlights is the view from Polychrome Overlook; at this point the dirt road hugs the side of a mountain and has a dropoff of around a thousand feet -- with no guard rail. It can get pretty tricky here for the bus drivers ---

During one of the bus rides the driver,  Darlene -- get on her bus if you can, she's a mine of info about Denali and its wildlife -- pointed off to an outcropping near Polychrome where there were two young Gyrfalcons, saying there's an active nest in the area -- 

The youngsters, probably siblings, would hang out together, the fly off on the hunt, rocketing over the vast landscape below -- 

Meanwhile, back near the campground, I saw a Snowshoe Hare turning into its winter color of white, which is for camouflage in the snow. It has the name "Snowshoe" because of its large hind feet -- 

Except for this Spruce Grouse, the Gyrfalcons and a blurry view of Willow Ptarmigans from the bus, I really didn't see too many birds in the park. Though I'm happy with the way this photo turned out -- 

I was enjoying myself so much, and the weather was for the most part so cooperative, that I ended up staying at Denali for 2 weeks. And Denali the mountain was "out" for most of that time, as seen here with the park road snaking off into the distance, and one of the park buses kicking up a plume of dust behind it -- 

Here's Denali on another day, near Wonder Lake -- 

OK, now on to the grizzlies... Here's one that ambled across the road in front of the bus, and went up the ridgeline. I had my 500mm with me and got this shot, but it was tricky as the frame of the window kept on getting in my view. As at my boondocking site along the Denali Highway, the big lens was a topic of discussion among the other passengers,  especially the Asian ones. One fellow even gave me his e-mail address so I could send him a copy of this pic -- 

I met some people during my time in Denali, chief among them being Robert and Mary Ann from Fort Collins, Colorado, staying at Teklanika Campground in their Arctic Fox camper. We roamed the land adjacent to the road together, looking for a wolverine that had been spotted near Polychrome Outlook but, alas, "skunked". Also Silvia, a bubbly German "girl" (35) with pigtails who was there with her husband; we kept on bumping into them on the buses. And there was a Parks Service employee who we also encountered a few times.  One of those times was when we saw this grizzly near the Eileson Visitor Center. It put on quite a show, gamboling in the tundra landscape and walking along the pathways near the center, though you're supposed to stay at least 300 yards from them -- 

Here are some more wildlife sightings, in no particular order. A caribou -

A grizzly with 2 cubs, giving itself a back scratch on a small tree -- 

The same grizz and cubs -- 

Just in case you thought I was kidding about the "gamboling" grizzly near the visitor center -- 

Another grizzly encounter along the road -- 

Bullwinkle!  

All too soon, my time at Denali was coming to an end. The weather was starting to get colder, and the campground would close in a few days.  This is along the Teklanika River -- 

It was now September 15, and I regretfully headed out of the park.  Denali the mountain had finally disappeared, but the landscape was of course still magnificent -- 

And near the entrance, the fall colors were spectacular. But what really impressed me was the vastness of the autumn display; it was way beyond anything I'd seen in the eastern Sierra --

And one last look at Denali from the day before. The weather is definitely changing, and it was time to head south...