The next few
days we went on several hikes:
Horse
Shoe Lake hike – Rated moderate this 1.5 mile hike goes up a canyon ridge
then down around a horse shoe shaped lake.
There is a beautiful view from atop the ridge down to the lake
below. Beaver dams in the lake but no
beavers were seen today.
Mountain
Loop Vista hike – And easy hike just a little over ½ mile. Nice views of the mountains surrounding the
area including Mt. McKinley when it’s not covered by clouds. This day it was behind clouds so we were not
able to see any of it.
Savage
River – This hike is mostly easy with moderate climbs at times. One mile down one side of the river, cross
over a bridge and another mile back along the other side. Nice views of the Alaska Range, rocky slopes
and interesting geological formations.
McKinley
Station Trail – We took the ranger led hike that leaves the visitor center
and takes you 1.6 miles one way, then we took the bus back to our truck. The ranger talked a lot about the different
plants including many different berries and encouraging everyone to taste them. There are so many berries in the park they
tell you to pick as many as you like. It’s
the only thing they will let you take out of the park. He took a leaf off of a tree, folding it on
one end, blew into the other and it made a whistle sound. The kids in our group really like that. They were cute trying it. One mom said something about taking a leaf and
trying it later. The ranger told her she
could not take it out of the park.
Funny, you can pick the leaves, kill it, but you have to leave it. Hmmm…
Thursday we
went on another long bus ride into the park.
This bus was a bit better than the last, It had more comfortable seating. They have another visitor center way into the park, I’m guessing about
45 miles or so. It’s new and very nice.
Seems strange to have it so far into the park, I think they built it there
because it has a fantastic view of Mt. McKinley. You cannot see the mountain from the
highway. You get your first view of it
10 miles or so into the park. Then the
park road winds around with views of Mt. McKinley every so often. This bus ride was 8 hours round trip. Nice thing about these buses is you can ask
to get off at ANY part along the road then take off hiking. Later, just stand on the road side & wave
down a bus. We got off at the farthest
point, the new Visitors Center then took a couple of hikes. One up a mountain, very strenuous and another
ranger led easy stroll around the visitor center. This park is different than
any park I’ve been to. Like most parks
they are real big on preserving the park, plant life and wildlife. The first 15 miles is accessible by vehicle,
paved road and has many manmade trails.
The rest of the road is dirt and only accessible by the parks
buses. There are no trails. They don’t want trails, they encourage you to
hike anywhere in the park you like. If
you see a wildlife trail they don’t want you to use it. By letting the people hike where they want it
keeps the plant life from being beat down.
They also encourage you to eat on the bus, do not eat outside of the bus
and don’t take your trash off the bus. Boy,
this is really different. Usually your
asked NOT to eat on the bus. When
wildlife is spotted they stop the bus, turn off the engine and everyone MUST
remain quiet. You cannot get off the bus
during a wildlife sighting. You can put
your window down but no hanging out the window, not even an arm. They don’t want the wildlife to get used to
human voices, or associate food with humans.
They don’t help the wildlife out with any food or shelter during the
harsh winters. They let nature take its
course. Really cool.
This day on
the bus we saw bears, cubs (close to the road), caribou, moose at a distance
and a wolf that came right up to the road and crossed in front of our bus. According to the bus driver this is a rare
sighting. There are only approximately
70 wolves in this whole park. It’s only
the 4th wolf he’s seen all summer.
We got so fortunate the Mt. McKinley was out and perfectly clear without
any clouds for a long time. We were thinking
we would not see the mountain, it rarely makes an appearance and when it does,
it will cloud up and not stay visible very long. Not only did we get beautiful views of the
mountain, at one bear sighting the bear crossed the road in front of us, went
to the other side and we got a picture of the bear with Mt. McKinley in the
background! AMAZING! Wow, how often does that happen?
Dog Sled
Demonstration – We attended one of their daily dog sled
demonstrations. They still use dog
mushing to patrol the park in winter.
You can pet the dogs (the puppies are so cute). The ranger did a good job giving us history
on dog mushing in the park. Then he
hitched up the dogs and ran them around for us to see.
We planned
to stay here one week but extended another 4 days. We love it here!
I posted some photos in Picassa dated August 10:
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