23-08-2013 Friday - Denali

Today, Chris kindly did a shuttle run for us:

On the hour, pick up/drop off from Grizzly,
20 past, pick up/drop off Denali Visitor centre,
40 past, pick up/drop off Denali "down town"




A bit drizzly/rainy today.





On the way we saw this moose cow.













Then not too much longer this one as well.


Claudia had informed us before we left this morning that "there are moose in Denali"....She was right:).  Like some of our other times the guides would tell us there were animals and we would really start to doubt - but so far they have all been right and we have seen them eventually.


The front area of the visitors centre. We started to look around, but went in to hear a talk by Ranger Alyssa about the park & the changing landscape - we as individuals can make a difference - was the main theme.

We also watched a movie about the park.













Some of the pictures of the animal section.































We caught Chris's shuttle to Denali Down Town & got something to eat. We caught the last shuttle back to the grizzly.









At ~2:30pm we were picked up in a bus by ranger Becky Irish for the Stony Overlook tour into Denali Park in a ranger bus. - full of information.

The deal was if you saw something you had to yell "stop" and she would stop the bus and pull into a better position.  She then got out her high powered video camera and would zoom in so even though sometimes they looked like dots on the horizon we could pull down the screens (above our heads here in this picture) and see a close up - also helped if you were having trouble spotting where the animal was as she would pull back too so we could get our bearings.



We saw a young Moose....










With it's mother.












Scenery again.












Then a Bull Moose














Giving us the eye....
























Teklanika Rest area view.







3 Dall sheep, way up on a hill.













A grizzly bear...way off in the distance.






























4 Dall sheep in the distance...












Brian helpfully pointing them out on the monitor :P












We saw some Caribou .... quite close to the bus.

























We saw a Grizzly Bear.... quite close to the bus.












Snow capped mountains in the haze.












The state of the bus after the drive on ~50 miles of gravel road - Becky "cleaned" down the windows at every stop - they got dirty very quickly as it was raining on and off and the mud just kept flicking up.










Luckily we didn't look like this and were nice and dry.

A very enjoyable tour and amazing how some people were able to pick out the animals through the muddy windows - some had binoculars to help - but still...