Denali ... Tundra Wilderness Tour

Unless one has a special permit, the only way to get deep into Denali National Park is either by an NPS transit bus or an NPS tour bus. The latter has a driver/guide who provides narration along the way.

We’ll be doing the transit bus from our next campground — Teklanika — to Eielson ... alas no tours to Wonder Lake this year. So, for our trip into the park from the Riley Creek Campground, we opted to do a tour. What a great one it turned out to be.

At the moment, the tours run only as far as Toklat at mile 53. That will change as of 1 June. But so will the occupancy numbers for the buses. At the moment, the tours are operating at only 50% capacity (with everyone masked up) ... which means plenty of space to spread out and everyone gets a window. This made our tour especially nice.

What a grand day this turned out to be … in every way. Weather-wise — despite it being rather on the cold side ... clear and crisp; scenery-wise — with mountains, braided rivers, blue skies and brilliant sunshine ... even. Denali peeked out from behind its cloak to give us a glimpse; and animal-wise — we had many distant sighting ... but also so many close encounters right by the road that even our veteran tour bus driver was amazed.

Our “close” wildlife spotting included moose (2 ... one of them a heavily pregnant cow) ... ptarmigans (4) ... Arctic squirrels (impossible to keep count of these critters that were scampering around everywhere) ... caribou (13 ... close enough to see the bumps, which are actually flies that infest their skin); Dall sheep (6 ... including one darling little lamb no more than a week old); grizzly bears (2 ... the Toklat blonde variety, so named for its coloring ... second-year cubs pushed out of the nest, so to speak, by mama); Mew gulls (several nesting pairs).

What a day this turned out to be!Read more