Denali, Days 0 and 1

We drove down towards Denali National Park after leaving Fairbanks. The drive down was amazing. Alaska has some massive mountain ranges but it is surprisingly flat in-between in many places. If you get up onto even a small ridge you can often for many miles giving some stunning views. 

We arrived at the park fairly late on Sunday night, so not much was open to explore. All of the RV accessible campsites were full through at least Wednesday so we ended up leaving the park and staying at a pull out about 2 miles North of the park entrance. 

On Monday morning we headed back into the park. We wanted to go on a quick ranger lead hike that left from the visitor center. It was about 2 hours and was a pleasant stroll. 

 

They also have day long “Discovery Hikes” that are off trail backcountry hikes that rangers lead that are more strenuous. We didn’t end up taking one of those this time, but it sounds like a lot of fun and is on our list if we ever come back. The main bummer of hiking in National Parks this trip is that Aiden isn’t allowed on most trails. She is allowed on a bike path right next to the road, and the road, but that is it. Instead of doing a backcountry hike we did take a bus into the park (also without Aiden), for more information on that check out the Day 2 post. 

After the ranger walk we went back to the camper for lunch and then checked out the visitor center. Denali has a really nice visitor center with a ton of information. We spent several hours in there. 

The other activity that we did on Monday was the sled dog demonstration. Denali is the only national park that has a working sled dog team. They are used to patrol the park in the winter time. At one point they tried switching the dogs out for tractors and snow machines but they kept breaking down in the 20 below and colder climate. 

We started by getting to walk around and look at all of the dogs. There were several dogs that we were able to get up close and meet. 

 

They have one puppy, Jewel, who recently joined the pack from another Kennel in the area. She was adorable. 

There were also two rooms with more information about the dogs, their history and their role in the park. We learned a lot. 

Three times a day they do a sled demo in which a ranger talks about the dogs for a little bit and then they harness up four dogs and attach them to the summer sled. It was pretty fun to see how excited the dogs all get to get the chance to get out and pull the sled. The ones that didn’t get picked seemed so jealous of the ones who did. 

After the dog demonstration we had a casual evening hanging out near the mercantile at one of the campgrounds. We did a load of laundry, used their internet and started to make a dent in our thank you notes. We were super excited to get deeper into the park on Tuesday.