We've been going up to Denali National Park in the spring before the busses take tourists into the park for over 20 years. It's a brief time when you can drive out to Teklanika campground (30 miles in.) Once the busses begin, the road is closed at Savage River (12 miles in.)
It's a time before things turn green, but there are fewer people around, campgrounds (but they were $55 a night, half that for Senior and other National Park Pass holders) are easy to get, and you can take your time, stopping where you want, as long as you want, taking in the magnificent views, and animals.
This year there was still more snow than normal - lingering from this record breaking winter. When we complained that we had seen no caribou at all (normally guaranteed) we were told that they are late arriving this year, probably because of the snow.
We left Anchorage Thursday morning, with some sunshine in Anchorage, but as we drove north it got cloudy and we had short bouts of rain and wet pavement then dry pavement much of the way.
There was a surprisingly good view at the Denali view point at mile 135. You couldn't see Denali, but you could see all the smaller mountains. (these are eight and nine thousand foot peaks.)
People at the viewpoint tend to talk to each other and ask where everyone is from. When they learned we were from Anchorage they wanted to know which mountain was Denali. I had to say, "None of them. It's the one towering above behind the clouds." Then I checked my camera and found my picture from exactly two years earlier and shared it. (The bottom photo was with a telephoto lens so there's some distortion between the two, but you get the point.)
As I compare the two images, it's interesting that there was more snow two years ago, because that definitely wasn't the case north of the mountain, in the park. The mountains you see in the top picture almost look like they are part of Denali in the lower picture. But they are all separate mountain peaks, about half the height of Denali.
Gas prices were interesting. The cheapest in Anchorage is around $5.49. In Wasilla, there are stations advertising $5.19 and a few on the outskirts with $4.99. (Anchorage has a local tax on gas that raises the price.) The Talkeetna turnoff station has $4.95 for the lowest grade.
But in Cantwell, where the old Native run station seems to be closed down, the Vitus station is raking it in. (Yeah, regular was $6.45/gallon.)
We were tired when we got to the campground and made dinner and got into bed. It wasn't sunny, but it also wasn't as cold as we expected.
One of the many awesome aspects of Denali is its vastness. You can see wild landscape that seems to stretch out forever. Below are two photos meshed together because one wide angle picture is way too small. And as one tourist we met says, "The pictures don't come close to capturing it."
Below are some more photos from Friday, a gray day with occasional sprinkles.
Here's J walking down from the Teklanika parking lot and viewpoint where the road ends. You can walk the mile down to the bridge over the Teklanika River. Though beyond the bridge was closed off due to "
a scheduled bear capture operation." (This for research, not to remove the bears.)
This is a view from the bridge. It's not a black and white photo, but looks lie one.
There are a couple of large ponds (not sure how big it has to be to be called a lake) near the Teklanika campground where we can normally see waterfowl. One still had a lot of ice and I didn't see any birds.
But the other one had
Northern Shovelers. Pictures in bird books often show the males with green heads. These had black heads. I asked the bird guide on Saturday and she said the green shows iridescent when the sun is right.
We were stopped at an overview, relaxing when a car stopped and asked if we'd seen any caribou. They hadn't either, but they said there was a bear about 3 miles down the road.
And not much later, we saw a driver looking out over his car. Following his gaze we saw a big blonde bear sleeping on the tundra. After a while, he raised his head, move a little further away, and crashed again.
This raven was making a racket.
There were lots of ptarmigan on the road. They're in the process of transitioning from the white winter plumage to the summer brown.
When we got back Friday afternoon, there was someone parked in our campsite. I wouldn't even mention this - he simply didn't see the paper clipped on the site marker, and since the site across the road was nice and was empty, we just pulled in there. But I'm mentioning it because the vehicle was
unlike any I'd ever seen. It was dark gray, almost black and looked like a combination of a truck and a tank. It was big. The license plate said Storyteller and I mentioned he could tell us a story. No, he said, that's the name of the company that makes the vehicle. He'd driven this thing up from Birmingham, Alabama and I don't know why I didn't take a picture.
But I looked up Storyteller when we got home. It's a company that makes very expensive and fancy campers.
The picture is from Storyteller. The sticker price for this model is $799,784 or $5385 per month.
There are different models and this seems to look like the one we saw. Look for it in Anchorage this week, where the driver was going to meet his wife who flies up to Anchorage regularly for work.
I guess there is a market for luxury goods for all those in the $50 million and up category.
The next morning there was sun and we'd found an 8:30am bird walk listed on the Denali Website at Mountain Vista trail, near the Savage River campground. We turned out to be the only visitors for the walk and our guide, Autumn, was great. She identified a number of small birds by their calls and some we saw. And at one point, we saw that Denali was out of the clouds.
I identified the bird on the right, which is a heftier bird than the picture shows, as a gray jay, but Autumn told me it is now called a Canada Jay.
Below is a white crowned sparrow. When we mentioned the bear and I showed her a picture, Autumn thought it might have been one of the bears that had been tranquilized.
The artwork below is what I'm calling 'stained ice' - which was naturally formed on the trail.
As magnificent as the park was on Friday, the sunshine on Saturday added to its glory.
Below you can see the landscape with Denali seeming to rise over the horizon.
And a closer look at North America's tallest mountain through the telephoto lens.
And then we turned around and headed to the Alaska Geographic bookstore next to the Visitors Center and then toward home.
We had lunch at a pullout along the Nenana River, just north of Cantwell. The 'shoreline' in the middle on the other side of the river is actually large blocks of ice stacked up. As we ate, ice floated by along the river. The Denali rivers flow north, into the Nenana, and then the Yukon according to Autumn.
A couple of hours later we got back to the Denali South Viewpoint. It had clouded up again as we drove south, but we walked back up to the viewpoint, where three young men from Orange County, California told us the mountain had been out. There had been a cloud obscuring the middle, but the bottom and the top had been visible. As we chatted, one of them said he thought the mountain was visible again. I took this picture, but it wasn't until I got home and looked carefully, could I see the white of the mountain showing through the grayer clouds.
Now we're back home. It's gray and the weather app says that won't change in the next ten days. Temps will get up to 50˚F (10˚C) and a little above. But the plants know summer is coming and the birch leaves are showing green, though they aren't fully open.
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There was a long line at the WIC table. This market is in the lowest income area of Anchorage and the 
