Around Byers Lake, Denali State Park

I did an earlier post of flowers and bugs we saw walking around the lake at this Alaskan State Park.  It was a grey weekend with some rain and lots of mosquitoes, but a reminder why weather shouldn't affect whether you go or not.  It was still much better than staying home.   The campground is about mile 147 on the Parks Highway between Anchorage and Denali National Park. 

This is Public Use Cabin #1 which Joe had reserved for the group.  It's right near the parking lot and on the edge of the lake.  A few people slept in the cabin, others in their campers, and others in tents.

The route around the lake is 4.8 miles and at this time of the year, very green and lots of flowers.














About half a mile from the parking lots, there are two more public use cabins.  This one is number 3.










At the south end of the lake, a small bridge goes over the drainage out of the lake.














While things were relatively dry, there were bits of boardwalk at different points along the trail.





















In fact, we were originally supposed to contribute to some other projects under construction this summer.  However, the state employee who was supposed to supervise us was diverted to another project.  It would have been nice to make a contribution here, on the other hand, I wasn't terribly disappointed. 








For those of you reading this far from Alaska, part of me would rather you think we are always covered in ice and snow.  But here are the pictures to show we even have lush fern growing along the trail.

We saw a lot of birds, though most were hard to get good pictures of.  Even this one of the trumpeter swans (with four cygnets) is a bit sketchy.  My favorites were the hairy woodpecker and the spruce grouse and the common loon.

We'd heard about the swans from people coming around the other way.  When we were near the north end, however, we saw them swimming quickly across the lake after some canoers got too close and disturbed them. 





And as we came to the suspension bridge at the north end there was a merganser.   I watched it float down toward me on the bridge, but when it was under the bridge I took one quiet step.  But it was enough to set it off.   I think this was different from the canoers and the swans, but why?  I guess because the merganser came toward me, not the other way around.


















Here's that bridge.

This is NOT one of the public use cabins.  It was near the end of our walk around the lake, but if you were to go clockwise from the campground, you could get to this cabin pretty quickly. [I did use photo shop to make the sign work better in the picture.]