Denali State Park

There are so many photos it is ridiculous. I suggest clicking on one so that you can look through everything as a gallery. Then scroll around to get some context. 

This is where our bus broke down. This is behind us.

This is in front of us.

All the men and men to be wanted to fix the belt

So the bus threw a belt, luckily only a mile from a rest stop. So our intrepid driver and guide was able to drive us to the rest stop where we waited till a new bus came. Luckily, even though it added an hour to our already 8 hour trip, no one wanted to bail on the rest of the trip. We were only 90 min in!

View from rest stop was beautiful, so not like we had much complaining to do!

We got on the new bus and decided it was time to have our nicely prepackaged snack. We were warned to bring other food, and I think we did, but actually, this was pretty hardy. The park and vendor has a pretty great system of recycling and packaging. They do not allow you to take any food off the bus, everything is even thrown away on the bus and removed once leaving the park. This is so that no human food ever comes in contact with the animals from large groups of tourists. Not even a crumb.

yum! Reindeer and cheese and mustard!

Crazy hair!

On this trip we saw caribou, moose, dahl sheep, and bears! We also spotted caribushes,

Tyler spotted a black bear! He made sure I saw it and then we nervously said "Bear! Bear! Over there! It was a black bear rock. Man, we even thought we spotted babies. We actually did not see a black bear at all. We did see grizzlies right up against the bus! And from far away we spotted a momma and her two babes!

mini glacier!

At some point, we are seeing the Polychrome Mountains. Tyler likes to call these the Pellichrome Mountains. Not sure why. He's got an affinity for the name though, and will not be corrected. We did not see Mt. McKinley/Denali. The best time to see it is in the winter. In the summer, it is generally too cloudy or too rainy to see. It was hard to believe that beyond these mountains is a soaring peak just covered by the density of the oxygen in the air!

There's an animal in there. We think it was a wolverine. Our tour bus guy said fox. 

Sticking with wolverine. So much cooler.

bear!

This is about when the lady next to us literally yanked her husband by the neck in order to crane his head unwillingly to try to spot the bear. Stay away from her, yeah!

Do you see the Yetis in the mountains? 

hey! we were told it wasnt permitted outside either!

I spy a Tyler!