Denali Day At Denali

 There was sun and blue sky mostly this morning and when we got to the first point on the park road with a view of Denali, there it was.  There were a few clouds near the top, but on closer look they were behind the mountain.

But even before we got to that point, we saw a porcupine.  I remember seeing one live porcupine in the wild in Alaska a long time ago, so this was a big deal. 

And then that first glimpse of Denali.  It's in the middle and looks like a cloud in the first picture.

But then, that's what the telephoto lens is for.  

I've got about 15 or 20 pictures of Denali today. I'll limit myself to these three.  It just dominates the view and may explain why we didn't see too many animals today.  We also didn't drive in that far because we knew we also had to go home today.  So we didn't go past the point where you could see the mountain.  

At one view point, I just climbed up the tundra above the road and kept looking back down at the expanding landscape and the mountain.  

Denali is still very much in early spring.  There are few (I don't remember seeing any) new green leaves.  And driving home, past the Denali viewpoint at mile 135, the trees seemed to go from just budding to full on new green.  But on my tundra hike I did see a few of these.  Don't know what they are.  

We came upon this ptarmigan while we had some classical Indian music on.  It seemed to pay close attention to the sitar and flute.  

This is a white crowned sparrow we encountered as we did the Savage River trail again, this time with sun shining on us.  

We saw a moose and a caribou outside the park on the way home.  A man was taking a picture next to his car along the highway.  I thought of the mountains to the east.  When suddenly a caribou dashes into the road in front of me and doesn't a 180 when he sees my car rushing toward it.  I guess that kind of quick change of direction is good wolf dodging genes.  Was the man waiting to take a picture of a caribou being hit by a car?  

This sad picture was near the road to Willow.  Remnants of a fire now that many years ago.  

The Riley Creek campgrounds now distinguishes between the under 30 foot and over 30 foot spaces.  Our VW camper doesn't take up much room, but for the most part the bigger spaces have more privacy.  So the space we normally have had we couldn't use.  We'd reserved online as in the past, but this year there was no place to do it live.  The Mercantile - the shop at Riley where you normally got your receipt - was closed.  And they had cards on all the A sites (>30 feet> telling you not to park there.  

Also, with the gas tax Anchorage added last year, gas is cheaper in Wasilla.  And amazingly, the cheapest was at Trapper Creek - $3.04 for unleaded.