Driving the Denali Park Road

One of the many benefits of living in Alaska is being close to Denali National Park. Even better is that every year the park holds a lottery for 1,600 lucky souls to enter to win the chance to drive the 90 miles in from the park entrance on the Parks Highway all the way to Wonder Lake and beyond to Kantishna, for four days in the second half of September. During the season from about May to mid-September only park buses are allowed beyond the Savage River, about 15 miles in. So it is a treat to be able to drive a private vehicle on your own schedule and exploring the parts of the park you are most interested in.

The park changed the rules of the lottery a bit this year, among other things requiring a $10 payment with the application, which much be sent in July of that year. I've been entering for something like 10 straight years and have never won, although I've used other people's permits when they couldn't go. I suggested that my sweetie, Carol Kleckner, enter this year as well. And, of course, her first time out she wins! Sheesh. But it was a good thing because she asked me to go along! Woohoo!

Our date was Friday, 17 September, and we bundled into the car yesterday morning and had an incredible day of amazing country and wildlife, including moose, plenty of ptarmigan, hawks, and the closest I've ever been to two grizzly bears. You can see photos here. These are only the ones I took with my digital camera; Carol used my 35 mm SLR to take a bunch of slides, so I'll add those after we get them developed and digitized. Toward the bottom of the page, look closely to see Denali (officially Mt. McKinley, but no one in Alaska calls it that), which we had great views of at times.

The bears were way, way cool. We spotted them as we came across the Toklat River bridge, around mile 53, on the up river side of the bridge. We drove on, hoping to get closer to them, but there was too much brush between the road and the river. So we went back to the bridge and spent about 15 minutes as they came in our direction and passed under the bridge right under us, then continued down river. Then they headed to an area around the port-a-potties, and we headed down there and got more photos. Very cool!