Imagine having only one, 95-mile-long gravel road to cover the entire state of New Hampshire. That’s essentially the status of travel in Denali National Park and Preserve – with major emphasis on the preserve.  The park has made a conscious decision to restrict visitor travel to protect the land and wildlife on the 6 million acres of park land, which meant that we saw only a small portion of this huge, beautiful park. You can see some pictures in the albums titled 06-28 Denali & Wonder Lake and 06-29 Denali & Savage River at the right. Here are a few of the things we discovered:

You can pay to ride a park bus on the road – which we did twice. The bus drivers know how to spot wildlife and will stop and interpret what bus riders are seeing. It requires about 11 hours to ride the entire road. Of course, you can get off the bus anywhere,  hike anywhere, and you will eventually get picked up by a another bus as it returns back to entrance of the park. One bus driver joked, “is that a hiker getting off the bus, or another part of the food chain?”

Those darn critters aren’t very well trained to pose for photos! It’s a crap shoot as to what wildlife you will see on a bus ride, and how far away they will be. Dave took a lot of pics of bear dots, dall dots (sheep), etc. On our first ride, we saw over 20 grizzles, several herds of caribou, foxes, a small pack of wolves, Dall sheep and some moose. On the second trip – during a torrential downpour – we saw very few critters as it seems they were all hunkered down to wait out the rain.

It is rare to see Mt. McKinley because as the tallest peak in North America at 20,320′ it often is hidden by clouds of its own making. Every year about 1000 people attempt to climb it between May 1 and July1 – with only about 1/2 succeeding. There were 273 climbing it when we were there. What’s amazing is that McKinley is so large that we could see it (on clear days) from our Savage River Campground – though it was still 75 miles away!

People still visit Denali in the winter – but on skis, snowshoes and dogsleds. In fact, Denali is the only park that has a working dog sled team to patrol the park in the winter.

There are only 250 campsites in 6 developed campgrounds – which makes staying in the park a competitive sport. Many travelers come to Denali to backpack and explore those areas not commonly seen by the majority of visitors. The advantage to staying in the park campgrounds are the visiting bears, lynx, moose and caribou. The disadvantage to staying in the park campgrounds are the visiting bears, lynx, moose and caribou that can become a little disgruntled to find you on their pathway…

Unfortunately, we also learned that 6 million acres is a lot of ground to search when one has lost one’s wallet. Susi is now trying to figure out how to replace her driver’s license…

At the Visitors Center, people are asked to reflect on what Denali means to them. As we left the park, we chatted about our experiences there. Dave said, “I keep thinking how successful we have been in preserving this park, and all the effort made to ensure that it remains a true wilderness. Wouldn’t it be great if we can use that as a springboard and, as a people, work with that same determination and commitment on other problems our country and entire world faces, such as hunger, poverty housing and inadequate education?”

Painting on my own in Denali, I marveled that I heard no other humans or machines – a rare silence in our world today. Arctic squirrels and snowshoe hares wandered within 2 feet of my painting space, and I kept an eye out for nervous momma moose and bears. I’ll long treasure these wilderness memories of glorious, unique mountain ranges, vast valleys, intense blue skies and animals roaming free!