Day 35 -- Bus trip to Wonder Lake in Denali NP

Tuesday 7/25/2006

We got up around 3:45AM to get ready for the bus trip. They had requested we be down at the visitor's center at least 15 minutes before bus departure and we knew it would take us at least 25 minutes to get down there with the truck. We packed food we could eat on the bus and headed down. When we got there (around 4:50AM) the line for the bus was already pretty much full. We got reasonable seats in the bus. It left promptly at 5:15 for the 11 hour round trip.

A view from inside the tour bus

The bus driver wears a head-set and, from time to time, speaks into a microphone for everyone to hear. As we arrived at the check point by Savage River, the driver pointed out that there would typically not be a guard at the station at this time. But when we got there, there was one. She explained that they were working 7x24 shifts this week without saying why. We continued along the only (gravel) road there is in Denali. It did not take long until we saw a moose.

We spot our first animal: a moose

The moose walked towards the bus an eventually crossed the road in front of it. Everyone was instructed to be queit as to not disturb the wild life. We continued along the road, no faster than 35mph. Some of the views of the park from the bus are quite extraordinary.

Another splendid view of Denali from the bus

More Denali beauty

The basic idea behind the buses is to abide by rules that require the park is retrained as a complete wilderness area. They do not want people driving into the park on their own. So they have arranged with a few partners/operators to drive into the park to see its beauty.

We spot numerous Grizzly bears. Here, a mother with her two cubs by the side of the road.

We learned that there is not much of fish in the park, such as Salmon. As a result, the Grizzly bears are not as large as they are by the coast, where they can get a lot of protein. At the end of the road we arrive at Wonder Lake. The weather was not that great, but the views were pretty good despite that. We ate a lunch by the picnic tables, trying to fend off bugs.

Wonder Lake in Denali for Lunch: With everyone fighting the heat back home, we're trying to stay warm

Continued views from Denali

The bus also picks up and drops of hikers. On the way back from wonder lake I got a chance to talk to one of them. The park is divided into geographic areas. They only give out so many permits (people) per night for each area. It seemed like you can just hop from one area to another, provided you have a reservation, by just taking any one of the buses than go up and down the access road. All in all the driver conceded that we had spotted much more animals than the average bus trip out here. We had seen all large game animals plus much more. Perhaps the only drawback was that Mount McKinley was swept into clouds. Only about 13% of those who take a trip out here actually get a change to see it. Here is a summary of all the animals we spotted during our bus trip out there:

As we returned, the bus driver let out that the reason why the staff in the park was working 7x24 this week was because the first lady, Laura Bush, was in the park right now, visiting a lodge a few miles further up from Wonder Lake. We made a quick dash out of the park after the bus let us off. After that we returned back to our site, where we ate dinner and just relaxed. The boys made a campfire from the junk wood we had purchased down in town. It looked like old leftovers from a construction site. I had to inspect to make sure they had not included pressure treated wood as well. The boys hunted for dry sticks around the trailer. Karl found a pair of snow hare legs that obviously had been bitten off from its owner. We infer, from our spotting of the Lynx by the campground, and the campground host's reference to a den around the campground that the hare had been taken by a Lynx. We ate spaghetti and meatballs. We were a bit tired from this morning. We went to bed fairly early. We had to keep the heat on in the trailer since it was not much warmer then high 50s when the sun went down.

A hare hops around our campsite and then huddles under our trailer

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist, Background features a running caribou.