Well, this is backdated a couple of weeks, I know, but this is really better late than never. We spent the weekend in Denali National Park and Preserve, which is between Anchorage and Fairbanks (about 5 hours north of us) in the middle of Alaska. It is a 6.2 million acre park that contains Denali (Mt. McKinley is the official map name of the mountain), the tallest peak in North America at 20,320 feet.

Denali is, of course, the cornerstone of the park. But the park contains millions of scenic vistas of the Alaska range, and contains tons of wildlife. We saw grizzlies, caribou, moose, sheep, ptarmigan, golden eagles, northern harriers, lots of rabbits, and others I probably forgot to mention.

The park is only drivable up to mile 15. But the park road itself goes on for some 85-90 miles. It is generally only accessed by bus. So we took a shuttle out to Toklat (at about mile 57 - roughly a 6-hour round trip from the Wilderness Access Center .. or WAC). So from the bus we saw most of the wildlife.

In addition, you can hike almost anywhere in the park. There are only a few areas off-limits to hikers due to high bear populations or recovering habitat. So, of course, we took off on a couple of short hikes. Next season, we'll get in a few overnight hikes - we probably won't have the weather for that on our next trip.

Of course, we took hundreds of pictures taking over a gigabyte of storage. I've included a sample for you on the pics page.