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Visitors 9
Created 3-Jan-09
6 photos

Denali National Park is a 6 million acre wildlife preserve located halfway and slightly west between Anchorage and Fairbanks in South Central Alaska.

The park hosts the highest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley, at 20,320 feet. It's occupants include photogenic Arctic Squirrels, Dall Sheep, Red Foxes, Wolfs, Grizzly Bears, Caribou (which at 900,000 outnumber the people), Elk, Moose and a vast array of birds.

We traveled into the park from the Denali Princess Lodge, and spent over 6 hours in what seemed like an endless landscape of a well preserved ecosystem. The National Park Service has done an incredible job of keeping Denali unchanged and the wildlife free to roam with little human interference. Visitor travel through the park is limited because of one simple rule: the parks single highway, a narrow dirt road, is only traveled by the park service's own buses. It's not open to the public. And although taking pictures from the bus through dirty glass and half worn shocks is a challenge, we managed to catalogue quite a bit of the experience.

A few notes on the photos: The beginning pictures show our 6 hour bus adventure through the park. The rest reveal our 6 hour train adventure to the lodge. The wildlife warning sign is constantly replaced because, yes, bears and other wildlife eat it. The mother bear shown here had three cubs a week before we arrived. Finally, the squirrels were everywhere. Even when you didn't want them in your shot!
Denali Rail WayDenali National ParkBird LifePort A PotsGrizzly BearRiver Rocks