June 25 Denali National Park

Our first day at Denali National Park started off with a drive into the park to the Savage River trail head, mile 15, where all private vehicles must stop. It was a beautiful sunny morning and we were treated to moose and caribou before reaching the trail head.

There is a two mile path at the trail head which follows the Savage River and we walked it seeing the Alaska state bird, (willow parmigan) a very toothy ground squirrel, (which was yelping at me and I have lots of pictures to prove it!), marmots (I almost stepped on the first one we saw because I was leading), porcupine and John saw dall sheep. John did great walking that far and said it was probably the longest walk he has had for a couple of years.

In the afternoon we took a drive on Stampede Trail which was a jeep road for about half the distance and then we headed east and found a huge beaver dam which had three busy beavers working on shoring it up with additional sticks and twigs.

It is dry camping at Denali and limited Internet at the mercantile store, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again.   It's been raining all day today and John went fishing.  Tomorrow he's taking a 12 hour bus ride 90+ miles into the park for wildlife viewing.  I did the trip when I was here before, so I'm just going to stay close to camp, do the laundry and get ready to move on Monday.