Denali National Park

Here I am again. Happy Labor Day to all. We are back from Denali and we managed to hit the fall colors just right again. It was beautiful. Of course THE mountain (Denali) has alluded me so far, but there are still a few days left and I may see it yet. The first few pictures are from the flightseeing trip we took and even then we only got to see odds and ends and bits and pieces (hey, that is an old country song) of Denali. Since it makes it own weather system it can be clear everywhere else, but not on the mountain. We did get rained on every afternoon, but they were short showers so it did not ruin anything. As you can tell from the pics I think anyone would have to be crazy to try to climb anything in here. There is nothing but snow, ice, glaciers and more snow and ice along with cliffs and narrow ledges, etc, etc, etc.


The scenery was outstanding from the plane. There were seven people on the plane and it was full so you can tell how small the plane was. We all had a window seat.



The bottom photo is of one of the many, many glaciers that are in the Alaska range. It is just incredible to think that this ice is millions of years old and still frozen and creeping along. No telling what is still buried in there.

Well, here is all we saw of Denali when we were on the bus ride in the park. This is from the best viewing point in the park and this is only the bottom half of the mountain so you can just imagine how big it is. This is the most I have ever seen of it and that was pretty incredible. Talked with one young man who has lived in Alaska for nine years and has only seen it once so I will count my blessings to have seen this much of it.

After our drive in the park we went south towards Anchorage and after about 40 miles we turned around and were presented with a rainbow over the mountain range. It rained on us and there was even a little bit of slushy ice mixed in so the mountains were getting their first dusting of snow. I thought the rainbow added a very nice touch to the drive.

I will send another blog with pictures of the critters we saw on the drive in the park. This was all that this one would let me download.