My second trip to Alaska - Day 3,4

May 14,15 - 2003

We decided to drive to Denali National Park and spend the rest of our time in Alaska here. Denali National Park is about is only about 250 miles from Anchorage and would take about 5-6 hours to reach including lunch and all the scenic stopovers. Our plan was to stay overnight at Healy - a small sleepy town on the Northern end of Denali. We had however, made no reservations in any motel here.

After Breakfast and checking out of the hotel in Anchorage, we started along AK1 North. On the outskirts of Anchorage, along the way, there was hiking trail to a waterfalls (I forget the name now, will update as soon as I remember) which we decided to take since there was enough time to reach Denali.

We parked our car at the trail head and started on the trail. There was a small lake with some beautiful ducks in the lake. The hike was a very flat hike with a lot of greenery on both sides and some beautiful plants along the way. It took us about 15 minutes to reach the waterfalls. It was a small, nice falls nothing spectacular but the ambience was worth it.

We stopped briefly for a gas fill up and when I went to use the restrooms the sign boards were quite interesting. Instead of "Men" and "Women" they have "Chums" and "Dollys" here.

From AK-1 we took AK-3 N towards Denali national park. The route was amazing. The snow capped mountains frame the highway and make the drive absolutely breathtaking.









We stopped at several places for the views and at others for filling gas.


There was particularly interesting gas station and restaurant shaped like an Igloo along the way! We stopped here to use the restrooms and fill gas up. There was quite a lot of snow here and reaching the restrooms through the snow itself was quite a challenge.


AK-3 runs past Mount McKinley which is 20,000 feet high. While mount Everest is the highest peak when measured from sea level, Mount Mckinley is the highest in terms fo raise from its surrouding region. One can stop on the road and catch some amazing view of Mount McKinley.

While stopping too see Mount McKinley I caught sight of a particularly beautiful bird - probably a species of sparrow but it was red and color.

By the time we reached Healy it was evening. It wasn't too hard finding a hotel since the season hadn't yet begun. In retrospect this was probably the best time to go to Alaska - the crowds haven't started to pour in and the parks had all just opened a few days ago. We gathered all the required information about the park. We decided to wake up early and drive in our SUV inside the park rather than take a bus since this would give is more independence in terms of where to stop.

We woke up early and drove into Denali national park. I was particularly looking forward to seeing a Moose and a Grizzly bear. Besides these two, there are wolves, rabbits, caribou, rabbits and a variety of other animals. We kept driving slowly, not to scare away the elusive Moose if it happened to stroll by, since Moose are particularly shy.

I think luck was really with us on this day, since we did catch sight of a Moose. Just as I tried to take a photo, the batteries in the camera died. I scuttled to find batteries and replace them, but alas by the time I managed to get the camera ready, the Moose had gone. Nevertheless, all of us caught a very good view of the Moose, it came to within a few meters of our SUV.

There were some beautiful birds along the way and we stopped to take some pictures.

There was a lot of Caribou in park. There were herds of caribou and we drove slowly so as to not scare them away. At some places we simply dead stopped our vehicle and some Caribou actually crossed from right in front of our SUV. It was an amazing feeling to see Caribou so close to us.

On the way we saw a completely frozen river. We stopped our SUV and walked on it. This was the first time any of us had walked on a frozen river before.

Then all of a sudden it happened, we spotted a Grizzly bear. It was quite far away but with Jerry's telescopic lens we could catch a clear picture of the bear. It was peacefully strolling about near a water source.

After this I was completely satisfied, I had seen a Grizzly bear and a Moose in their natural habitat.

In Denali there was also a Huskie center where we would get to see and learn about Huskies. Das was particuarly thrilled seeing huskies. The rangers gave us a demo of Huskies pulling a sledge. Its amazing to see them in action. The initial acceleration when the Huskies start off is fantastic - I would think you definitely need some training to hold on to the sledge. These dogs want to pull, and were barking with anticipation. They are really quite fierce dogs - no I would call them magnificient.

It was already afternoon by the time we were finished with Denali. We had lunch and drove back to Anchorage, since we had a flight to catch next day.