A Summer in Bergen: "You Haven't Seen America Until You've Seen Alaska"

That was a quote from the visitor center at Denali National Park. And I totally agree with it. Alaska seems to have so much to offer, and I've only seen a little of it.

Saturday morning, we woke up early and loaded into a van to head to Denali. The weather finally turned on us and gone were the beautiful, sunny and warm days. It was overcast and looked like rain. Plus it was surprisingly chilly after a mild two weeks. The ride was about two-ish hours until we reached the park. We had an hour to kill at the visitor center before our bus tour started, so we checked out the gift shop and watched a short film about the history of the park.

Finally, we were ready for the tour. It was going to be a long day because it was an eight hour tour, all on a bus. We did get to stop along the way at designated places, and whenever a passenger yelled stop because they spotted an animal or wanted to take a scenic photograph.

During the bus ride, we saw a moose and a baby moose, a couple bears, three wolves, a little group of sheep high up on a mountain, a caribou, and a fox. Plus birds, squirrels and lots of rabbits. It was pretty cool to see all these animals in the natural habitat. The bears were pretty far away, but at least I can say I saw them. The three wolves were an accomplishment because apparently there are only about 50 in the park. Our driver said he had never seen so many wolves on one tour.

In addition to never seeing that many wolves, our driver had also never seen so much rain. Pretty much the entire eight hours it was raining or threatening to rain. Cloud were everywhere, which gave the mountains a mystical look. However, that also meant we couldn't see Mt McKinley. Which is kinda the highlight of the whole park. I take this failure to spot the mighty mountain to mean I need to head back there one day. And I will gladly return to Alaska some day.

Saturday evening we went to a salmon bake restaurant where they dropped a tray with our food on it. That was a bummer. I wasn't that hungry so I just ordered chili, but it was buffalo chili. I felt bad for eating buffalo, so one of the guys said to think of it as beefalo, so I had beefalo chili.

That night we stayed at a motel and then Sunday morning we were off to Anchorage. Our van driver was an interesting fellow, but at least he got us to our destination. I haven't seen much of Anchorage so far, but what I've seen is amazing. The University of Alaska at Anchorage campus is gorgeous and the mountain range looms over the city. It's beautiful.

The next few days should be excited with travels to a glacier, a day cruise, and a visit to the bay where the Exxon oil spill was.

Photos below!