Denali Day 1

We changed our minds and decided to bring our bikes and John's fishing gear. After parking the Jeep in over night parking, we go again to the visitor's center to visit with the rangers there about hiking. This one was much more informed and encouraging about hiking off-trail. She also pointed us in the direction of doing a ranger guided hike.

The drive up to Teklanika Campground is 29 miles and takes about an hour. We are climbing the whole time on gravel road and always have an eye out for wild animals, although we don't see any. The views are beautiful. Tall mountains surrounded by fast moving rivers and grassy or shrub covered fields. We cross the Savage and Sanctuary Rivers and pull over a couple of times just to check out the views. At Teklanika we come to a border crossing where we are informed that if we come back thru there we cannot go back to the campground and we cannot drive past the campground. The only vehicles going on from here will be campground and tour buses. There are more campgrounds besides ours inside the park but all others are tent camping and one must ride the buses to access them.

Once we have set up the RV we get on the bikes and ride up the road about 5 miles. The only animal we see is a snow-shoe hare. The Teklanika River is nearby so we walk down to look at it. As are all the rivers in the park, it is not clear but a gray chalky color. Almost all the water in the park comes from melting glaciers and they carry glacial silt. This is from the ice moving across the mountain rock of slate and granite, crushing it into a fine powder. That also means the fishing in these rivers are poor at best as most fish can't survive in this water.

There is a ranger program each night at the campground and tonight he talked about Caribou. Both the male and female has antlers and both shed them each year but at different times. The male antlers grow about an inch a day and can weigh more than 20 pounds when fully developed. The female antlers are smaller and used for protection. There are only about 2000 in Denali at this time and most have moved north to calve and feed so we may not see very many.

We are so tired! It's an early bed time tonight!