Left Anchorage a little late, but knew it was only 250 miles or so to Denali National Park, and it’s not like it gets dark early these days! Rolled in expecting a nice, big park with lots to see, actual experience was a little different. First up – camping. You drive in and there are a few signs (but not enough) and one says “campsite registration”, of course it doesn’t tell you where but I figured it out. Luckily I had an inkling that you needed to register before going to the campsite (I had chosen one 13 miles in). This is unlike any other national park I had been to. ($43 for 2 nights) Once that was done I asked about the busses into the park. I had heard that you needed to ride busses into the park, as you could only drive the first 15 miles, so I picked up a ticket for the following day ($23).

Set up camp quite close to a couple from Seattle (Hi Peter and Robin) who were great, poor Peter had eaten some dodgy Reindeer sausage earlier and was paying the price. It rained a little and I got ready to sleep, but this was the farthest north I had been yet and it was still light out at midnight, so that was something different.

The next day I boarded my bus and departed for the middle of Denali! The trip was beautiful, we got some more views of the mountain and saw a bunch of wildlife, grizzlies, caribou and some Dall sheep. Unfortunately the road was only open just past the half way point, so I didn’t get to see some of the things I wanted to, but it was a cool experience anyway.

Overall Denali was cool, and likely would have been a lot cooler had I not been to so many amazing national parks in the last 2 months. I left feeling a little let down.