Denali National Park

Grande Denali Hotel--Living high on the hog.

Our guide stated, "One day was a little clearer but swarmed with mosquitos, so this was the very best day of this year." We lucked out! The sun was out! We have tons of beautiful pictures of Denali , the Athabascan name for Mount McKinley @20,320 ft meaning the high one. We saw 30 or more caribou, maybe 10 bears, and I could never locate the wolves with my eyes but some could.

The above our kettle pots: holes in the ground formed from chunks of glacier that broke off and melted. One rock dropped by a glacier was over 3 stories high.



The road goes 90 miles through the park: the above pictures are at the end of the road. You can drive to mile 15 and must take either a tour or shuttle bus if you wish to pass this point. We did the tour to the end of the road which gave us these great views. If I would spend more time I could pick out the best pictures but sometimes it is difficult to see the thumbnails and you just get some by chance. This lady is my hero: Fanny Quigley. She left her abusive husband in Dawson City, pulled a dog sled to Fairbanks and on up to Katishna, a mining community at the end of this road, fell in love with one of the local miners, could mine her claim, shoot her meat, make pies and cook, had a freezer in one the mine caves, hauled dirt up from the creek and made a terraced garden, entertained some of the big shots that came to Katishna quite successfully, and then her old man got hurt in the mine, sent to the hospital in Seattle, fell in love with a nurse, came back and sold off their mines, split the money in half, but with the 50,000 she still remained in this mining community. Locals built the house below where she died at 73 in 1944.

Finally, a caribou in the wild.