July 2nd - Denali

Denali National Park

(No pictures today)

We headed into Denali around 2 pm on the camper bus, arriving at Wonder Lake 5 hours later. The drive was significantly more uneventful then the first time I had been at Denali, with very few wildlife sightings, and those few sightings being fairly far away. The weather was disappointing, a thick fog covering all the mountains - and rain clouds threatening overhead. The plus was that we got a great bus driver - and we were on the camper bus, not the tourist bus. Wonder Lake was a mosquito haven. They were everywhere. We had neglected to buy mosquito nets, and immediately regretted it. The swarmed around us, and stuck to the mosquiot netting of our tent trying to get in. It rained as we fell asleep, the skies not offering any promise for a better weathered tomorrow.

Gregg and I had been suprised to find that there were literally just a handful of maintained trails at Denali - mostly at the visitor's center. The rest was left up to bushwacking through brush or bog. With 6 million acres of park, them's a lot of bushwacking options.