It was grizzly bear day today. Someone said we saw 13 but I lost count. But perhaps the most unusual sighting was a wolf, wandering down the road. They are seen but not often so we were pretty lucky!
Today we took the long shuttle bus, out to the end of the road. Perhaps a bit of explanation: Denali has only one road into the park. It extends from the east side entrance 90 miles to Kantishna a small mining village still owned privately within the park. The first 10 or so miles of the road are open to the public and from there on only park buses and vehicles with permits can use the road. So today we took the Kantishna shuttle bus, a 13 1/2 hour return journey. The buses are driven by very well trained people who seem to really love their job. I don't blame them! They really know their stuff. They instruct the people on the bus how to be quiet, not hang out the windows etc, so that the animals are not disturbed or habituated to humans. They do get habituated to the buses, but there is not much that can be done about that if people want to see wildlife.
The first wildlife we saw was the wolf. He was just wandering down the road so we stopped and waited for him to come by. He was a bit skinny, but that may be because it is just spring here. Then we saw a procession of bears. Bears eating, sleeping (they looked like crash test dummy bears, just sprawled by the road), bears walking. We also saw some sheep, caribou, a moose cow and calf and two young bulls. Most of the bears were in pairs or triplets, which were probably sows with yearling or two year old cubs. We didn't see any weenie cubs (so I still ache a little for that!). They don't breed until they stop suckling cubs which can be up to 3 year olds so I guess 2-3 years ago must have been a good time to see weenies.
Kantishna was a bit ho-hum, there was one museum (closed) and not much else, but the trip was for the journey not the destination anyway.
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