Denali National Park

My friend Kara came up from Michigan for a visit in Sept. so we headed to Denali National Park in the hopes of seeing wildlife and Denali (Mt. McKinley). With high hopes I had entered the Denali Road Lottery but was denied (sigh) so we had to make do with driving just to the Savage River turn around which is just over 15 miles into the park. Because of the ever present rain we were unable to see Denali before hitting the park but the rain broke once we hit the park and we did get to see Denali although it was a less impressive view as it was shorter than the other mountains around it.


Besides squirrels the only animals we saw in the park were these cute sleddogs. They gave a small presentation and the dogs ran around a short track. They were all so cute. I wanted to take one home, especially one of the puppies!!
So speedy! It was hard to hold on, good thing I'd been lifting weights.


We also took a guided hike and learned a ton of useful information like how many types of lichen there are (3), that there are 8 types of trees in the park(I can't remember any besides aspen, spruce, alder, birch, larch and cottonwood) and which berries are safe to eat. I would not recommend the pumpkin berry however I could survive on crowberries and cranberries and I suppose I could eat the lichen too, caribou love it, but I don't think I need that much roughage in my diet =)!