glacier_kitty

Yesterday we drove to Denali..the weather was so gorgeous! When we got on the ridge we could see McKinley in the distance..yayy! (Also Hayes, Hess and Deborah on the opposite side of the range..epic!) When we got there we got our bus tickets and boarded. I don't know what was up with our driver, but she didn't want to spend a lot of time at anything..annoying. Finally I have seen the mountain from the park!! The driver kept saying how lucky we were haha..only 30% of visitors see the mountain in the summer. The bad thing about such a nice sunny day is you don't see as much wildlife. We saw a whole bunch of caribou for some reason. We didn't see ANY moose though..wow, that's unheard of haha! There were also a couple bears in the distance eating a carcass, and mom saw another through binoculars eating a caribou. McKinley looked so epic though..I know I've flown around it and stuff, but seeing it from the park that close is just different. It just looks so HUGE..wow. It was nice seeing where the mountain should be when usually it's cloudy. I love how pretty everything looked in the sun. By the time we got to Eielson Visitor Center clouds had gathered around the mountain and you couldn't see it very well..boo! We stayed awhile there and went hiking around this little trail. There was another that went to the top of this 1,000 foot mountain..it looked very tiring. :P We took another bus back to the entrance..our driver didn't talk at all except to say how long we'd be at a rest stop and stuff..weird. After we got back we went to a couple shops (I got 30% Club pins and shirt..yayy!), had dinner (there was a drink on the menu called Sex on the Nenana..love it haha!!) and drove home. I'm glad I finally got to see Denali on a nice day!