Denali

[glacier_kitty]

Thursday after work we drove to Denali..we got our hotel room and found out it was right next to the Nenana River!! You could stand on the walkway thing outside the room and just watch the river or rafters go by! We all were like OMGGGG haha (we stayed at the same hotel as last year). You could hear the water in the room too. Then we went shopping..I went into this one store and I found a shirt that said "Glacier Girl"! I about DIED haha. I bought it of course. :P On Friday I had to get up at around 5:45 AM..though it wasn't THAT bad since I slept well (maybe it was the river?) and since it's light out. We did a bus tour that took us aaall the way to the end of the road (90 some miles). Mom and I were pointing out evidence of past glaciers to each other haha. We couldn't see McKinley cause it was cloudy. We saw moose, ravens, caribou, Dall sheep, foxes, grizzly bears, TWO bald eagles (it's rather rare to see them up here), some other eagle, squirrels, arctic hares, ptarmigans, a marmot, seagulls (heh), magpies, a beaver..umm. The tour guide let us off at Polychrome Pass to take pics and I asked her if there were any glaciers over there and she said yes! (I read in a book too they're covered with dirt) Then she said we'd go by Muldrow Glacier!! I was like OMG YAY!!! haha. I showed her my Glacier Girl shirt and she called me that for the rest of the trip hehe. As we were heading to Wonder Lake I saw allll these dirt mounds piled up over a large area and I was like "is THAT Muldrow Glacier?" Mom agreed with me that it looked liked a glacial moraine. The tour guide didn't say anything though. At Wonder Lake we stopped and a park ranger talked about this pioneer house and we got swarmed by mosquitoes haha. Then we got back on the bus and drove the rest of the way to Kantishna (a village..it's actually outside the park boundary). The park ranger talked about a woman called Fannie Quigley (and saw her house). She was a tough gold miner lady. It surprised me to learn she's buried in Fairbanks in the Birch Hill Cemetery! Then we got back on the bus and proceeded to drive aaall the way back. As we were coming up on the mounds of dirt the tour guide was like "maybe Glacier Girl can point out Muldrow Glacier?" Turns out it WAS Muldrow!! The end of it is covered with dirt and stuff growing on it. The people on the bus were like "all that's a glacier??" haha. Maybe if it was less cloudy we could see more of it going up the mountains or something. We got back at around 7:40 PM or so..that morning we left at around 7:45 AM..woww haha. Then we went to dinner at Cabin Nite..these people act out historical characters and tell about stuff we learned on the bus (Fannie was a character). It was sort of overrated. Today we went shopping, ate lunch and drove home. We stopped at this place and totally saw the actor guy at Cabin Nite that was our waiter haha. He looked tired. :P Now pics!

Brenda is leaving tonight..and Ryan is coming tonight to live here again!



TANANA RIVERRR







The confluence of the Tanana and Nenana rivers at Nenana

That reminded me of going over the Mississippi River



Nenana









Hotel view!







Moose!





Young moose



The Savage River





See the hill things below the mountains? I think those are glacial moraines

Female ptarmigan. People saw chicks with her but I didn't see them

Male ptarmigan

The Sanctuary River





This one is the...Teklanika River?





A bald eagle eating the carcass of a caribou or something

Bears



Polychrome Pass. That is a MAJOR glacial area. The valley was carved by a glacier, there are glacial erratics (rocks left behind by glaciers), kettle ponds (when a piece of glacial ice like sunk into the ground before it melted). Somewhere in those mountains are glaciers apparently haha





The Toklat River maybe?

Moraines?

There's a glacier up there..if you can see it's the twisty like thing

Muldrow Glacier!




>
Wonder Lake. That is actually a huge kettle pond from a huge chunk of ice from Muldrow Glacier







Moose Creek





More Muldrow







Caribou

Fox

That happened like yesterday or something..it began as a crack. The tour guide was amazed by how fragile the earth was..and that we were seeing the earth in action. Woww..





Bears. We got to see the cubs playing!! Awww hehe

Dall sheep nursery

Pic of the day:



Stink heads: An Eskimo delicacy with a descriptive name, these are fish heads buried until they begin to resemble Limburger cheese, then dug up and eaten. If that's not enough for you, there's stinky fish, which are whole fish prepared much the same way

Comments

[witherwings7.livejournal.com]

Next time I go to Alaska I'm going to Denali...and hopefully also Gates of the Arctic :D

[foxydanish.livejournal.com]

Those pictures are so amazing. They're absolutely beautiful! Your hotel room view was stunning. You got so many awesome pictures of rivers, glaciers, and wildlife, too! Wowwww. I LOVED all of the animal pics!! *Jealous* Heehee. That looked like so much fun!!