September Denali Trip, Part 1

Because of some incredible generosity at work, Frank and I found ourselves driving the 240 miles to Denali N.P. on Thursday in order to participate in the road lottery. For those of you who don't know, by winning the road lottery, you can drive your own car all the way down the park road -- stopping wherever you want, whenever you want.

If you are ever going to Denali, I can vouch for the fact that fall is beautiful, as you can see from the photos below. Not to take anything away from either place, but Denali's fall colors are like a saturated Hatcher Pass -- the greens are almost too green, the reds are almost magenta, and the birches of course are a bright yellow color. When you add this mix to the beautiful blue/white/grey colors of the big mountains, you have a combination that just cannot be beat anywhere in the world.

So it was a bit of a blessing, really, that we drove a lot of the way to Denali under cover of darkness -- that way, we were not distracted by the colors on each side of the road! I, as the self-appointed safety engineer had more time to worry about gas and catastrophe (Were there enough gas stations between here and Denali? Yes.), and Galileo had more time to pant and look unhappy to be stuck in the car for so long. Frank's eagle eyes quickly caught two huge female moose that crossed the road, but that was the only real excitement of the trip up there.

We stayed at the Grande Denali Lodge, which is the infamous lodge that overlooks the valley. The rooms were quite nice, although you definitely were paying for the view, which was spectacular. As we found out through our days there, since this was the last weekend most businesses stayed open, many things were closed and the restaurants were running out of things. However, both restaurants we tried (and even the gas station's sandwiches!) were quite good, even with a limited menu.

The next day, we got up around 5:45am to get our road permit and get on the road. I do believe we were the first ones there as usual! After getting the permit, we got some quick sandwiches at the gas station in town, then started on the road...



This is the first shot I took, probably only about 2 miles into the trip. As you can see, the colors were spectacular!



As if that weren't enough, some of the valley was covered in beautiful yellow plants...


Then there were some unbelievably beautiful mountains that were unreal:





Mind you, this is all the scenery that you can see still on the road. This rock formation was at the stop where only those with road permits could conintue...


At the checkpoint, we were once again reminded of all the rules about the road by a very friendly park ranger. Then, of course, more road...










One of the most interesting things to me about Denali was the continuous change in landscape and vegetation. Soon we were in fields of gold...




..and then back into a valley with different colors than the others.


Soon we stopped at the Telanika River rest stop, which was full of tourists in big buses:


...but we were able to slip right by the tour buses and get back on the road quickly!


Soon the landscape changed again, and we were in a place that somehow reminded me of New Mexico:



Then, we turned a corner and saw a slew of cars stopped by the side of the road. We stopped too, and looked out to see dall sheep impossibly close!






More Tomorrow!