Saturday 8/13 was our full day in Denali, and we packed in as much as we could. It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too cold, and no bugs outside of the campground. We hiked three trails, visited the sled dogs, and saw some animals during the shuttle bus rides.
In Denali, there's a single road through the park. Cars are prohibited most of the way but free shuttles run along the first 15 miles. The park also runs long sightseeing bus tours for a fee, but since the road was still blocked completely after mile 43 due to a landslide, we decided instead to spend the day hiking and visiting the sled dogs. We packed some water and lunch, then hopped on a shuttle to the visitor center to check out the exhibits and snag some park brochures and trail maps.
From there, we took the free shuttle bus to the Savage River Loop trailhead. The signs noted that food was prohibited on the trail (don't attract those grizzlies!), so we ate our lunches before starting. This was a beautiful trail! The 2 mile hike was mostly flat along the river banks, but we scrambled up some rocks at one point for some adventure and a better view. We kept looking for big animals but didn't see any while hiking, until we got to the end of the trail and told a ranger we'd been hoping to see the Dall sheep that live on the mountainside. She immediately pointed to some that we'd missed, which even with binoculars looked to me like little white dots.
After we left the Savage River, we had time to kill before the sled dog demonstrations, so stopped at the short (.6 mile) Mountain Vista Trail. Very pretty again, but this was my least favorite of the four trails we did in Denali. Not near water, mostly through flat grassy areas, less scenic.
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| Mountain Vista trail, meh (LOL) |
Back on the free shuttle to visit the sled dog kennels. Throughout the day, the bus drivers stopped anytime someone saw a large animal. We saw a moose and some caribou, but never any bears or wolves. We were both happy and sad that we didn't see any bears. Very glad not to have to use that bear spray.
The sled dog demo was definitely the girls' favorite stop of the day. The rangers hold free demos with the dogs three times a day in the summer, and you can visit the kennels outside of those times as well. We walked around the huskies' houses, waved at the dogs, and laughed at their names (Munchkin? Cupcake?). Then, we were surprised to find that we'd lucked out and visited while they were raising new puppies! These little fluff balls were about 8 weeks old, and the rangers held them up one at a time so we could pet them. Adorable. During the demo, the rangers talked about all the different stages of training the pups go through, and we even got to see the puppies race! Our section of the audience was rooting for pup Mike. 😄
After the shuttle dropped us back off at the visitor center, we decided to follow the 1.5 mile McKinley Station Trail hike back to the campground rather than waiting for another shuttle. We were slightly worried about that decision when we immediately saw scary large claw marks on a tree. We asked Zadie to stop pretending she was a baby animal and whimpering like a delicious trail snack for a grizzly, and forged on. The trail followed the Riley Creek and had pretty views of the water and bridge.
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| McKinley Station trail |
I was tired by the time we got back to the RV (later learned this was early Covid, arg, so glad we wore our masks everywhere indoors!), and took a short nap before dinner. Bill and the girls got some ice cream while Mary did everyone's laundry (thanks!), then we made dinner in the RV and rested up for another day of hiking.