Travel Guide to the Countryside: The mountain was out!!!!

We spent 9 days around the area of Mt McKinley – 3 days in Denali State Park and Talkeetna and 6 days in the national park. On our 5th day the clouds finally parted and the mountain was out in all it’s glory at 10:30 in the evening – what a beautiful sight! It towers over all of the other mountains in the Alaska range. It is 20,320 feet high. 18,000 people have attempted to climb the mountain – 60% succeed. 1% die trying. On the average it takes 2-3 weeks to climb the mountain. In the early 1900’s it took 3-6 months and sometimes longer than a year. 1,200 climbers attempt to climb the mountain each year.

We stayed at a campground in the national park for 6 nights and attended the campfire programs each night, guided ranger hikes, several hikes on our own and took a shuttle bus 85 miles into the park to wonder lake. The shuttle bus is one of the best ways to see the wildlife and we saw quite a lot – grizzly bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep, fox and arctic ground squirrels. The grizzly bears were busy eating the berries that ripen this time of year. There are signs of fall everywhere and it’s just the start of August –leaves are turning colors and the bears are eating berries all day long putting on weight for the long winter. They eat 200,000 berries a day – it doesn’t seem possible to eat that much in one day!