A Drive on the Park Road

We arrived at our hotel, the Mckinley Chalet Resort, chosen because it was near the Denali entrance and because it offered an $89 a night Road Lottery special. I thought it might be a little empty and really need extra guests but I was wrong!  The huge lobby was filled with noisy, excited people, all rushing to tours or returning from them.  Three cruise tours were there, about 1600 people.

Our room was comfortable and fortunately was on the ground floor right outside of the main building.  We rolled all of our camera equipment and luggage in and took a property bus down for lunch.  $22 hamburgers and $12 bowls of soup!  We were glad that we stopped at a grocery store on the way up to buy snacks and sandwich makings for future meals.

There was still plenty of daylight so we set out to explore the open 13 miles of the Park Highway.  Our first stop was at the Park Headquarters pick up our Road Lottery pass.  The rangers made that fun, smiling and congratulating us on our good fortune.

In previous trips to the turn around point at Teklanika we have seen bears or moose.  On the ride there we enjoyed the scenery but saw only a grouse.  An exciting find was at the Teklanika rest stop.  A large flock of ptarmigan in their fall plumage were gathered there.  I sat on the ground and did my best to photograph the fast little birds.

On the way back we did see several moose, I jumped out of the car to follow one very large moose but he never came out of the brush so all I was able to photograph was his big head and huge antlers.

We headed back to the hotel to charge camera batteries and get some sleep before our exciting day tomorrow.