6/9 - Denali Shuttle rides

We woke up to clear skies and got ready to spend the day on the bus.  We chose the 8 hour shuttle instead of the 12 hour (round trip) on, as many many people have told us you get nothing extra but a achy butt.  I didn't even want to spend 8 hours on the bus, but I did want to get to the visitor center at Eielson, 66 miles in.  No way we were making that on the bicycle.  Single bikes can go on the shuttle buses, but even the bus set up to take camper equipment will not take a tandem.

We couldn't take the shuttle from the RV because after asking several people for information about them, we found that accurate info was not to be had.  {those asked included a ranger at the visitor center, one of the shuttle drivers, clerk at the RV park office}.  Shuttle schedules for the town to the entrance and the schedule for Ranger talks were things that were kept close to the vest.  You would think they could at least put it up on a web site for people to see.  I would have loved to have seen/heard one speaker, but we didn't get the info soon enough to use it.  We found one table with the ranger talks posted and instead of a flyer we could take, they had some scratch paper and stubby pencils with a note to jot down ones of interest.  Anyhow, not impressed at all.  Guess they are only interested in putting 300,000 people on buses and shipping them in and out of the park each year.

When our bus drove up this morning, the "loader" commented that we were lucky we had "Dale" and he was an outstanding driver.  David said I'll bet all your drivers are outstanding, and the loader said that they weren't.  We tested that and found the loader to be right on the money.  Dale was excellent.

Male Carabou

Dale was excellent at spotting wildlife.  He obviously loves the park and was full of enthusiasm for it and the animals.  He normally lives in Anchorage and works as a computer programer, but he arranges his schedule to work the season, May - Sept, as a bus driver.  He has been doing it for 20 years.  His days off started tomorrow.  He said he'd be riding the bus to a drop-off point, showing where he would be starting his hike.  One of the backpacking rules is you have to camp at least 1/2 mile AND out of sight of the road.   

Denali's north side was only partially visible

Teklanika rest stop...nice for pit facilities.

Dale Ebben

The road got very narrow in parts.

Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the bus to get the really narrow parts.  I just couldn't show the erosion from here.

Dall sheep

Grizzly bear

These were on the cliff above us.

This bear was quite a distance.  By the time I got lined up with the camera, he was moving away. 

One thing that surprised me is that except for near the visitor centers where they put paths in for high use areas, there are no trails.  Hikers can walk where they want (although Dale said to stay off the tundra as it is easily damaged and difficult to restore).

You can mix or match green shuttle buses.  We didn't want to leave ours, because Dale was so interesting.  But he encouraged everyone to go out and just spend some time in the park, so we did.

More caribou.

We got to the Eielson Visitor Center about 1:30 and had 30 minutes there to eat, visit the exhibits and do whatever else you wanted to do before Dale was heading back.  It wasn't enough time, so we didn't go back with Dale's bus.

Visitor Center (Eielson) is built into the hillside. 

Our next bus experience was not near as pleasant, so David asked the driver to stop along the road.  We got off and took a hike.  Between a baby crying on the bus and the not very social/informative/interesting driver, the ride just wasn't fun.  We enjoyed the quiet and tramping around with just the two of us.

It started sprinkling, so David was using his shirt to keep the binoculars dry.

Some Dall sheep babies in this group.

The Toklat River mixes water sources.  Clear water joins glacier water (murky part on left).  The rock sediment is so thick in the glacier water, they call it glacier flour.

These antlers are surprisingly heavy.

Do you think this caribou is strutting his stuff for the mating season?

These guys were traffic stoppers.

 We picked up another bus at Toklat, but we weren't able to see much from where we were sitting and felt the people hogging the seats with the better view were pretty rude.  So we got out again.  We were curious about the Teklanika campground anyhow. 

 Much easier to take pictures when on foot.

When camping at Teklanika is the only time you can take your personal vehicle on the park road, at least up to the campground.  They have special rules though,   You have to stay a minimum of 3 nights and can't drive out of the campground until leaving.  That was to many restrictions for me to deal with this trip.  We walked around a loop of the campground and talked to the people from Michigan (that crossed from Dawson City on the same ferry trip with us).  They were able to explain the shuttle pass, a Tek pass better than the web site.  Essentially they cannot go any closer to the entrance than this camp without having to buy another bus ticket.  The pass is good to go closer to the end of the park road though.  They went to the end (Kantishna) and said it was to long of a trip and nothing much different than had been seen just going to Eielson like we did.  Camping at Teklanika is definitely something I'd do if we came back, at least for part of the trip.

Once we were ready for a ride again, we went out to the park road.  The bus didn't come like it should according to the posted schedule, but we knew there were at least two others tonight, so just enjoyed walking down the road.  We had spits of rain here and there today, but shortly after we got picked up the rain started in earnest.  By the time we got back to the closed Wilderness Access Center it was coming down in buckets.  We debated waiting there (under the porch and out of the rain) for it to stop, but the sky was dark and we didn't see any signs of it abating.  I was very glad we had covered the motorcycle so our helmets were dry.  It took longer (standing in the rain) to get the cover off, but it was worth it to not have to put a wet helmet on our heads (we did that yesterday).

Hopefully when we stop at some viewpoints tomorrow, Denali will be visible from the south side.  We have things stretched all over to dry.  We have been pretty lucky with the weather.  Maybe it will continue, and we have sunny sky to load up in.