Denali Nation Park, Alaska

We spent the night on the side of the road between Fairbanks and Denali NP.  I have mentioned the mosquitoes a few times, well they are enormous here in Alaska and there are millions of them!! They are so bad that you don't want to get out of the RV at times.  We found a lovely lake off the road to spend the night and saw a beaver swimming around in the water. 

We went out to have a look and it started swimming around, then diving, making a huge splash with its tail.  I managed to stay out of the RV for about 30 secs until the mozzies picked me up, so I sat and watched it in the comfort of the RV.  Stu stayed longer and took some footage of it...Beaver in lake
It was quite incredible to see.  We also saw an old looking moose near the side of the road....

The next morning we drove the 60 kms to Denali NP, which ended up taking about 2 hours as there were roadworks most of the way. Fortunately I have downloaded some Hamish and Andy podcasts, so the 10 mins we had to stop every 5kms we were kept entertained by them!
We booked 3 nights at Denali NP and it is a great system.  If you stay at Teklanika campground in the Park, you have to stay for a minimum of 3 nights.  You buy a bus ticket which you can use as many times as you want while you are there. Once you have parked up in your camping spot, you don't use your vehicle again, and can only catch buses.  To get to the Visitor's Centre in the middle of the park would take 1 hr on the bus, and a bus passed by the campground every 1/2 hr.  Along the way people would spot wildlife and the bus would stop for photos...so sometimes a 1 hr trip would take 2 hrs.
So we got our passes and headed off and within 15 minutes there were cars stopped along the road...and it was 2 grizzlies and a cub, down in a river bed...a fair way away. but they were there!! Denali delivered!

 

The  next morning we caught the bus and were treated to some spectacular scenery along the way....

The road is narrow, gravel, windy and steep and the bus driver's are amazing....looking for wildlife, commentating and negotiating buses coming the other way!

 The road in this area just drops away to the side...nothing to stop it and when you are sitting on that side of the bus, you look down and it is a sheer drop...but I had great faith in these drivers and they delivered.  By the time we got to Eielson Visitor's Centre it was raining really heavily.  This is where (on a good day) you can see Mr McKinley...the highest mountain in North America.  Needless to say, on this day...we saw nothing!
So we decided rather than staying up there, we'd get back on a bus and head back down to do a walk, where the weather might be better...a great decision.  We had a stretch of road to ourselves....it was downhill, the views were amazing and it only sprinkled a bit!

We walked for a couple of kms and when you are ready, you hail the next bus and if they have room they pick you up.

We got back to our campground around 5pm, had a quick tea and then headed back to the bus stop to catch the last bus that heads out to the park.  It is meant to pick up stragglers who are still in the park, but the driver we had also does a wildlife commentary.  There were 11 people on the bus, the driver (Craig) was fantastic...he was so knowledgeable about ALL thing wildlife in the Park and he had a keen eye for spotting wildlife while he was driving.  The good thing about this bus was it was the last bus of the day so no other vehicles were behind us and most of the buses had left the park.

So when he slammed the brakes on and told us to look high up in a mountain, we couldn't believe our luck...It was a sow (female bear) brown bear (grizzly) with her 2 spring cubs, which means they were born about 6 weeks earlier. 

We watched them walk down this really steep ridge, then they disappeared out of sight.  Craig, our driver slowly drove around the other side of the mountain and we watched them come down the hill.  It was the most incredible sight.  He turned the bus off and the 11 of us on board didn't make a sound and for 1/2 hr we watched these bears...mama bear was digging furiously for food, while the cubs played, fought, chased each other, ran to mum, ran away....it actually bought tears to my eyes that we were able to see this in the wilderness of Alaska!

The sow was digging for food and it was incredible to watch her rip up the ground

and the cubs just played.....

No one made a sound the whole time we were there.....except for the clicking cameras.  It was a beautiful time.  I was able to get some video footage of them and here's what we saw....Brown bear and cubs, Denali NP
We got back to the campground around 10pm and had a few celebratory beers...Alaskan style....

The next morning we caught an early bus and headed back up to the Visitor's Centre to do a walk towards Wonder Lake.  This is an area that is not open to the buses yet, so we were the only ones on the road. Brave Stuart!

At the Visitor's Centre, up a mountain, there was  another sow and her 2 cubs, so I was a bit hesitant to do the walk.  But fearless Stuart convinced me and we headed off.
The views were spectacular....and we could even see parts of Mt McKinley through the clouds....

We'd been walking for a little while when a delivery truck pulled us over and suggested we turn around as 1/2 mile down the road ws a sow and 2 cubs in the middle of the road, and it would be too dangerous to approach her.  That was enough for me, so we walked back up to the Visitor's Centre and caught the next bus down the mountain.  We got dropped off at the top of Sable Pass and decided to do another walk. Again, beautiful country...

This time we couldn't believe it when we saw another brown bear and her 2 cubs.....high up a mountain.

Not only that, but below them was a moose and her newborn foal.  The bears were stalking the moose and we watched the bears slowly working their way down the mountain towards the moose.  The mother moose led her foal into some bushes and waited.  As the bears got closer she started to run down the mountain, stopped and turned on the bears.  She let out a loud bellow and the bears ran off.  Mum and foal then ran down the mountain to a creek to safety.  We watched her and she kept looking back to see if the bears were following. 

They weren't.  Meanwhile, the bears headed back up the hill towards a sheet of ice.  And we couldn't believe it as they made their way across the ice...sliding....it was fantastic to see! Brown bears on the ice

To be able to witness this, from the side of the road, on our own, was quite the experience.

We waved the next bus down (who had missed all this), made our way back to camp and then immediately hopped on the last bus again to go back up to spot for more wildlife.  This time we didn't see as much, certainly not the caliber of what we had seen earlier,

but there were plenty of caribou

and Dall sheep

and Red Squirrels

....and of course, spectacular scenery, including Mt McKinley in full view!

So it was an amazing few days...way beyond our expectations...and talking to other people in the park, we saw so much.  In total we saw 14 brown bears (grizzlies) moose, plenty of caribou and Dall sheep.  Just fantastic.  And I might add...it doesn't get dark here at all...here are the current sunrise and sunset times at Denali NP!!