Quick Denali Pics

I'm sitting outside the closed visitor center at about 8pm to get the wifi.  It's in the 30s so I'm just going to put up some pictures without much conversation.  But I will say there's more snow than we've ever seen here, but the roads are great and we borrowed some snow shoes at the visitors center and I hiked a very windy mile with the snowshoes along Savage River and back.  Lots of rugged fun.

This was still about 40 miles from Denali National Park.

Here's the trail.  Well it's covered with snow, but you can faintly see some snow shoe tracks of the last person, but they're being covered quickly.

Snow shoes aren't the tennis racket kind of things of yesteryear.  These worked well, but you use different muscles and the wind was pushing really hard the whole way.  In my face on the way back.

 Much of Savage River along the trail is still covered with snow, but parts were showing.

Here are my tracks, just after I walked there, but on the way back they were barely visible.  The wind was blowing the snow as you can sort of see in the pic below.

The brown across the snowed over river near the top left is the bridge.

Here's the trail going back.  You can sort of see my old tracks.

Not sure whose tracks these are.  Rabbit?

I'll check tomorrow.

Here's some glaciation on the other side of the river.

Here's a view looking toward the west and the mountain, except the clouds are hiding the mountain.

And this is where we parked, popped up the top, and cooked some dinner - why our VW camper has been such an important part of our lives all these years.  Where else can you get dinner with a view like this?

We didn't see a lot of wild life.  A bald eagle flew alongside the road on the way to the park, just above the trees.  I saw a small flock (10-15 birds) take off on the side of the road.  They were white and 'snow bunting' popped into my head, but I have to check.  I did see snow bunting in Wales, Alaska once.  Also three ptarmigan - all white.  I don't remember seeing them like that before.  Usually, they are shifting to their summer plumage so they are half white and half brown.  Or in the summer all brown.  And then this moose.

My fingers are getting cold, so good night to you all.