Denali National Park and Preserve was
established in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park. It was designated a park
and preserve and renamed Denali in 1980. The mountain was officially renamed
Denali in 2015. It is approximately 6 million acres, a fraction of which is
seen by visitors. More than a thousand attempt to climb Denali each year;
slightly more than half attempting to summit Denali succeed.
You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.
Upon entering the park, we went to the bus depot (mile 0.75)
to see if we could leave the motorhome parked there and use our jeep instead of
a shuttle bus. There are three parking lots, one of which is for RVs. We fit in
fine after unhooking the jeep. We went inside the bus depot to see what kind of
information they had. They sell the park passes, but nobody checked so far to
see if we had one. They sell the tickets for the tours and the free shuttle
buses stop there. There were the park brochures, a gift shop and food. We found
out the sled dog demonstration has a small parking area, so the free shuttle is
advised. We missed the shuttle at the bus depot, so drove the jeep to the
visitor center (mile 1.5) and caught one there.
The dog kennels are, I believe, at mile 3.0. There is a
small parking lot there, also for a trailhead. Some dogs are in a pen, some are
leashed by their houses and roped off, and some are leashed but in the open for
the public to pet. She said they take turns so the dogs don’t get too stressed.
We moved to the demonstration area for the ranger talk. The
ranger gave us information about the kennel, the dogs jobs with the park, the
dogs themselves. As she was talking, one of the dogs started barking, through
most of her talk. She said he’s just excited for the demonstration. They pulled
five dogs out of the kennel to hook on to the sleigh-cart. The dogs were so
excited. They couldn’t wait to take off. They only go around a short little
loop and they were full of energy. She
talked for a bit while the dogs were getting treats and water.
At the end of the ranger talk/demonstration, some of the
dogs were unleashed and allowed to run back to their doghouse where a ranger was
waiting for them to leash them. I think
it was the two younger ones that were kept on a leash and ran back with a
kennel worker. There was time before and after the demonstration for petting
and pictures, and to see their building with pictures and kennel supplies.
From there we went to the book store/gift shop and then to
the visitor center. The visitor center is a large building with a theater and a
lot of displays on two floors. (You can use steps or an elevator.) There also
have information and maps and the back country camping permits.
The furthest you can drive in your private vehicle is to
mile 15, the Savage River bus stop; unless you have camping reservations at
Teklanika, mile 29. The different tour buses can go to the end, mile 92. This
is a full day bus ride if you go to the end. We drove to the Savage River stop
and did the Savage River loop trail, 2 miles round trip. This is rated at
moderate. They also have the Savage Alpine trail, which is rated at strenuous,
which I knew I wouldn’t be able to do.
Pretty flowers blooming
As we’re finishing our hike, and we crossed the bridge to go
back to our jeep, there were two caribou to the south in the dry riverbed. One
standing, one lying down. Nothing nearby to eat, not sure why they picked that
spot.
After this, getting to our jeep and ready to go, the jeep
wouldn’t start; battery dead. We waited a little bit for the people parked beside
us to come back and he jumped the battery and thankfully we made it back. While
we were waiting, we saw a ranger going across the bridge and telling people to
get away from the caribou, they were too close.
Denali was not to be seen today, but it is a beautiful
drive.
For more pictures, please
click here.
