Denali National Park
After checking out of the hotel in Talkeetna we took the long bumpy road up to Denali National Park. The weather had improved significantly but it was still cloudy. We went directly to the Visitor Center where we got a chance to look at some of the exhibits and have some lunch. After lunch we boarded a special bus that does tours in the park.
Our group took the park’s History tour which was somewhat informative but since we had been to the park previously we would rather have taken the Tundra Wilderness tour that would have gone farther in the park. We saw no animals on the tour but did get to see the magnificent scenery. While the weather had cleared we couldn’t quite see the Denali mountain, but what we could see was beautiful. The flowers in Alaska are spectacular during the summer because of the rainfall and the extended days. Sunset was around 11PM and sunrise a little after 3AM. It never got totally dark.
While we didn’t see any animals on the tour we did see a mother moose and her baby near where our bus was parked.
The tour concluded about 5PM and we went directly from there to our hotel at the Denali Village which is quite a distance down the road from where we exited the park. The hotel is a series of buildings with some tiny shops in an area they call the Pioneer Village. At night there are campfires where you can make smores. We had dinner at the hotel and afterwards took a walk along the Nanana River behind the hotel before calling it a night.
