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| Denali Park Road |
Continuing north from Byers Lake we stop in Cantwell at the
Cantwell RV Park just off the Parks Highway on the west side of the Denali Highway. Partial hook-ups H20, power and dump station.
Good Wi-Fi when the park empties out.
This is our base camp to explore the front of Denali National Park and
the surrounding area. After setting up
we take a drive on the Eastern Denali Highway.
It’s one of THOSE ROADS, the one’s they warn you about but it’s really typical
of most unpaved roads with a few rough patches, but nothing Dave can’t
handle. The scenery is typical Alaska
spectacular, mountains forests and tundra. We don’t see a lot of wildlife, just
and abandoned beaver den, a caravan of Jeep Wranglers driven by Princess Cruise
Tourists, some folks picking wild blueberries and a couple changing a flat tire…
So, maybe the warnings are warranted.
There’s not a lot to Cantwell, a couple of gas stations, a
trading post and a mini-mart. Thirty
miles up the Parks Highway, just north of the Denali park entrance, is an area
known as Glitter Gulch. The hotels, shops and restaurants were built for the
Princess Cruise tourists who arrive by train and bus. It looks like Disneyland’s Frontier Land, so
we just drive by shaking our heads. A little further north is the town of Healy
with a Brewery, gas station, liquor store and mini-mart. Between Cantwell and Healy there are
Adventure Tours, Rafting, Tours, Air tours, cabins to rent and some restaurants
and of course the road to Denali National Park.
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| Husky Pup |
Mention Denali National Park and most people think of Mt.
McKinley, AKA Denali or The Great One, but the mountain is actually a recent
addition to the park. The original
mandate of the park was to protect wildlife, specifically the Dahl Sheep. Access
by powered vehicles to most of the park is limited. During the summer months,
most visitors are shuttled in busses to various spots along the ONE road in the
park. Winter access is by dog sled (no snow mobiles here!) and the park
maintains a kennel of Alaskan Huskies that are used to patrol the park when
snow closes the roads. During the summer there are dog sled demonstrations and
rangers at the kennels to answer questions about the dogs. On our first visit
to the park, we visit the Kennels and later take in a ranger talk about his
experiences mushing in the park with his own dogs. It’s interesting, but this experience is
pretty limited to the few folks who have access to a team of dogs and want to
camp out in way too many degrees below zero weather.
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| Savage Cabin |
The Visitor center has some diorama displays, information
about the wildlife and a short film about the park. Nearby is the Murie Science and learning
center dedicated to research of the arctic and subarctic ecosystems. There are a number of interactive displays
where we spend a few hours reading about the flora, fauna and geology. There is also one restaurant, The Morro Grill,
at the visitor center campus where you can get a cold beer and a really tasty
burger.
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| Bull Moose |
The first thirteen miles of the Denali Park Road is paved
and open to all vehicles. We drive this
a few times watching for wildlife and explore the Savage Creek Area. The Savage Cabin is typical of early trapper
or homestead cabins and is still used by rangers today. It is a one-room log cabin with shuttered
windows. The shutters and areas around
the windows are covered with nails, the pointy ends sticking out, to keep bears
from breaking in. There is an
interpretive trail near the Savage Creek Campground with photos of the early
campers from the 1920’s. It is
interesting to see how the landscape has changed. What was formerly barren tundra is now
turning to forest as the climate warms. We also hike a couple of miles around
the Savage Creek. It’s an easy loop hike
along the creek bed with two bridges to cross the river. We see some arctic ground squirrels and a
beautiful caribou bull with stunning antlers. Along the road we also drive past
a magnificent Bull Moose.
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| Arctic Ground Squirrel |
For the second half of our week in Denali, we move to the
Teklanika Campground. It is located
twenty-nine miles inside the park. There
is a minimum stay requirement of three days, which should be plenty of time to
explore the western end of the park. We are
given a pass that allows us to cross through the gate at the Savage River
Bridge and drive the unpaved road to the campground. Dave will stay parked
until it’s time to leave. Since we are dependent on the bus system, we
purchased a Tek Pass, which gives us unlimited travel on the park shuttle
busses from the campground to the end of the road in the Kantishina distriict.
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| Hunting Grizzly |
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| Caribou Bull |
Our second shuttle experience is a little different. This time our driver is somewhat informative,
but dry and not too entertaining. He
does stop for wildlife and we see more bears, Dahl sheep and Caribou. We travel
to the end of the road to Kantishina. Originally a gold mining settlement it
now is home to a number of upscale resorts where folks pay a hefty price to
stay in private establishments within the boundaries of the park. The stop here is brief to view a homestead
cabin and walk along the creek where we look for traces of gold. The scenery here is pretty underwhelming when
compared to the rest of the park. On the
return trip we stop at Wonder Lake. The only thing this body of water has going
for it, is on a clear day it reflects Mt. McKinley. But it’s overcast and rainy so no wonderful
reflections. However, there are an
abundance of wild blueberries that are ripe for the picking so we get a couple
of handfuls to munch with our lunch.
Past the Eielson center we spot another grizzly, loping up the
hillside. He stops, digs, pounces and
comes up with an arctic squirrel that takes him moments to devour. He digs around some more but the other
squirrels have left the den. We joke about returning later to put some flowers
on the spot where the squirrel met his demise.
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| Grizzly |
Our third shuttle ride is completely different. This time driver number three has no
commentary, only comes to a rolling stop for photos, and sometimes stops the
bus in front of shrubbery, when he could pull up a couple of feet, so the
passengers could get a better view of the animals. Ironically on this trip we see wildlife
closer to the road that any other trips. (go figure.) But our fellow travelers
are fun and we entertain ourselves.
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| Dahli Rama |
So after a full week in Denali, we have a lot of photos of
wildlife, but the mountain has been shrouded in clouds and it’s rained every
day. But that’s OK we saw McKinley from
the road when driving around Trapper Creek and Byers Lake, but we never stopped
to take a photo. (pretty lame huh?) Well
as driver number three so dryly put it, “it’s just a big rock covered in snow.”
Driving out the road is muddy and by the time we exit the park Dave and Dimples
are in desperate need of a spa day!
Overall Denali is good and bad. Lots of wildlife and incredible scenery, but
the shuttle busses are pretty uncomfortable and you feel like you are on s
school field trip. A month in
Yellowstone is barely enough a week in Denali is more that enough… time to move
on…
k
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