Miko and Me: The Grand Finale

Today is a big day – we are heading to Denali National Park, home to Denali – the highest mountain in all of North America and the third tallest mountain in the world. Denali was formally known as Mt. McKinley but the name was changed to Denali, not too long ago in 2015. Spoiler alert: We never saw the mountain, it was an overcast day, but there is so much more to Denali than the mountain.

We left Anchorage in the morning and seven hours later arrived in the town of Denali. We had breakfast and lunch served to us on the train, which helped to break up the ride a bit. We were shuttled to our hotel, the Grande Denali Lodge, where we finally had an amazing view from our hotel room. We were perched up on the side of a mountain, overlooking the park itself. Anika needed a break from all of this nature stuff, so we headed back down the mountain to the town of Denali – souvenir shops, adventure tour companies and pizza.

The town of Denali

We were scheduled to go to the Music of Denali Dinner Theater where the wait staff are also the entertainment. We were sat at the head of a long table with family style dining. A couple from Missouri were sitting across from us. The man was a music aficionado and grilled Anika about his chosen music. I personally was appalled when I learned that Anika had huge holes in her music education. I mean, who hasn't heard of Creedence or the Who? This must be remedied.

Denali National Park is bigger than the state of New Hampshire. There is only one 92 mile road that services the park. You can drive your personal car down the first 15 miles of the road, after that, only park vehicles or park buses can go further down the road. This really cut down the congestion and allowed us to have better luck at seeing the animals. As it is, we could only go 43 miles down the road because a landslide had taken out the road.

This is called a braided river, many different channels that separate and come back together.

Fireweed was quite prevalent. The plant starts blooming at it's base and as the summer goes on, the blooms move up the stalk. People get very sad when the blooms reach the top because that means Summer is Over.

According to our bus driver/guide, we needed to be on the lookout for the 'Big Five' species. Moose, caribou, grizzlies, Dall sheep and Ptarmigan. We were so lucky because we saw them all. The Dall Sheep were just little white specks on the side of the hills. We saw five grizzles, one of which came right out of the bush right next to the side of the bus.