Denali National Park
As Matt updated you all on the things we had been doing in Anchorage and around that area, he left me the blog post to discuss our trip to Denali National Park. We headed towards DNP on Saturday, which was about a 3-4 hour drive north from Anchorage. At this point, once you get past Wasilla (home of Sarah Palin…and despite Kim Jorgensen being a die-hard, watches Fox and Friends everyday, struggling with what do to with these election options, republican-we didn’t stop to have coffee with her), the towns become smaller with little to no resources. It should also be said that we have come up here at the very tail end of the “tourist” season, therefore many shops, stores, and restaurants have already shut down for the year (because it’s winter here now), so it’s just you and the vastness that Alaska has to offer as you drive north. We did stop in Talkeetna and had lunch and of course a few brews from the Denali Brewing Company. As we got closer to the lodge we were staying at on Saturday, we had the opportunity to see both a moose and a black bear and her cubs along the side of the road. This was a very exciting thing, as this was one of the main reasons Matt’s parents wanted to come to Alaska was to see the wildlife, especially bears. We also got our first glimpses of Mt. McKinley (AKA Denali), the highest peak in North America on this drive up. It’s a pretty amazing thing to see. We checked in and got ready for Sunday, which was going to be an extra early morning as we had to be in line to get our road lottery ticket beginning at 7 am. Ok, so let me explain this whole Denali Road Lottery system to those of you who are wondering why did they wait until the very end of the season to go up to the park and why couldn’t we have gone earlier in the season. Well…Denali NP is a huge park that has one road that is 92 miles long and travels both in and out of the park. The road also changes from paved to gravel at mile 15. Several decades ago, the NPS was trying to accommodate some 2000+ cars a day during the summer months as visitors were coming to see the amazing aspects of this park. Well, you can do the math, but basically in effort to reduce the traffic, wear and tear on the parks resources, and to keep this place as wild as possible, they went to a system that all the time you would now have to take one of the parks converted school buses down the 92 mile road (this takes 12-13 hours to do by the way) and no cars would be allowed on park roads after mile 15. But, there is still one option to get to drive your own vehicle down the road, it is what they call the Road Lottery System. The last 5 days the park is open for the season, you can submit your entries in the park lottery system between May 1-31 of the year you are going to try and go. They report they get 20,000 entries, but only 1400 are selected each year. If you are selected, you are assigned the day your pass is good for and that is the only day you can go (despite weather, travel issues, etc.) and drive your own car down the 92 miles (which yes, it still takes 13 hours, but you aren’t crammed on a school bus that can’t stop to take pictures when there are wildlife sightings). We put our entries in in May, and we were notified June 15th this year that we were selected. Our day was Sunday, September 18th, so basically this entire vacation was built around that one day. We arrived on Sunday at 7 am to pick up our pass from the visitors center and off we went. We arrived back around 6 pm to the gate entrance after a day of rainy, fall-like weather, as well as a full on winter snowstorm (it snowed significantly at higher elevations), you truly had to be prepared for all weather conditions during this voyage. The mountains were just amazing and the wildlife viewing was the most spectacular we have seen. By the time we made the 12 hour drive through the park, we had seen too many animals to count. Although the day in the park we had was not the most opportune for viewing the Denali mountain (rain, clouds, snow), we still had a successful day in the park and the experience was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. Some people we had talked to had been trying for 6+ years to get one of these tickets, so we are super lucky to have had this chance to see such an inspiring place in a way most others will never get the chance to do. I’ll leave you all with some of the pictures from our park day, so you too can see how awesome the place truly is on any day of the year. Happy viewing!
