Rio Travelers: DENALI ALASKA

Our trip to Denali National Park was incredible. We took a 13 hour bus ride as far into the park as you can go. The buses are the only way to visit the park as cars are only allowed for the first 5 or 6 miles. Our bus trip included a lunch stop at Kantishna Lodge at the end of the road. The lodge has seen some famous visitors in the past like Laura Bush and the twins as well as George Clooney. The highlights of the day were seeing Denali (Mt. McKinley) as well as all the animals. Alaskans are trying to get the mountain's name changed officially to Denali which means "the great one" since it was named after a president who never saw it or set foot in Alaska. The mountatin is 20'000+ feet, always covered in snow, has at least 5 glaciers and creates its own weather. It is only seen without any cloud cover less than 30% of the time so we considered ourselves very lucky. The wildlife viewing was fantastic. Not only did we see caribou, both bull and cow moose and at least 9 grizzly (brown) bears; we saw a wolf feeding on a caribou that he/she had just taken down then, on our way out of the park, we saw a bear feeding on that same caribou. The brown bird in the picture is a ptarmigan. They turn white in the winter.

The day after our visit to Denali NP was a free day and, even though the weather was terrible, we did some outdoor sports. Some of the group went ATV riding and some of the other crazy ones went white water rafting on the Nenana river. The water never gets over 38 degrees and the air temperature was about 48 that day and it was raining. They put us in "dry suits", gave us a lesson on what to do if you fall out of the raft and took us on a 4 hour ride over class 2, 3, 4 rapids. We had a blast. It was so cold and wet but every time we hit a set of rapids it was a thrill and you forgot how cold you were. We actually have a young guy in the caravan with us. He just graduated from college and this was his gift from his parents. He rented a small RV and says he is having a good time with all the old folks.