Today was our scheduled bus trip into Denali. Denali has totally limited access. The paved part of the road goes the Savage River and stops. At that point access is restricted to permitted vehicles and the park busses.
There are numerous shuttle buses going this way and that. For a tour of the park, you can either take a shuttle, a transit bus or a narrated tour. All are school buses but they weren’t bad at all.
We took off at 8 AM. Everything we needed for a day in the park. Cameras, lunch, drinks, snacks, sun glasses, hand sanitizer etc. etc. The bus did have an overhead rack for all the packs.
The neat part about the buses is that once you pay for a bus you can get on/off any time you want and hop any other bus(except the narrated tours) that comes along. You are limited as to how far you can go into the park by your initial bus ticket.
Our ticket took us to Eielson Visitor Center, right across from Denali. 4 hours one way. The driver drives, everyone on the bus is in charge of when we stop.
If you see something or want to get off just yell “STOP” and the bus stops. The bus also stops/slows for all sorts of other things: animals, other buses, hikers, bikers etc.
The entire bus ride is on a dirt road, in good shape though. For many miles, the road is essentially a 1-way road and the buses an only pass each other at the wider spots. Our driver was extremely careful on this part of the road.
We had breaks every 1.5 hours or so. Felt good to stretch our legs, have a drink etc.
We finally arrived at Eielson, if Denali had been clear you felt like you could reach out and touch it. We did see the bottom half.
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| Those 2 white dots are Doll Sheep |
Animals: squirrels, Snowshoe Hares, Moose, Pica, Juvenile Ravens, Golden Eagles, Caribou, Golden Grizzly, Doll Sheep. A good day for animals. Some were pretty far away so they are just spots.
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| 2 Magpie chasing a Hawk |
Someone on the bus had one of those electronic zoom cameras, wow, totally impressive in how far they can zoom in. There is image stabilization so the pictures are crisp. We were so impressed we decided to get one for the rest of the trip. The camera he had went to 840MM, the latest model goes to almost 1400MM, we will be able to see eyeballs at a distance.
Our current good camera is 10 years old an has served us well. Tom will start using that camera and I will use the new camera with all its bells and whistles. The new camera, a Canon SX70, also does video. This is a handy feature which we have on our good camera now. I hope to use it for whales, eagles and whatever else we see. I am not great with video since I need to use a screen instead of the eye piece. Not sure what other bells and whistles the new camera has but the camera should be waiting for us when we get to Homer in 10 days or so.
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