Alaska-Part Two-The road to Denali

One of the highlights of our trip was traveling to, through and from Denali National Park.  Denali encompasses over 6 million acres of land.  I can't even fathom that amount of untouched space.  If I had a chance to go back to Alaska again, Denali is where I would choose to spend my time.  On foot.  In a bus.  On foot. In a car.  On foot.  You get the picture.  It's beautiful, even when it's overcast or raining. 

This is the Denali Princess Lodge's main building.  It's a huge resort.

This pizza joint was across the street for the lodge.  The pizza was good, as were a variety or two of the advertised beverages! 

I didn't have my wide angle lens.  I'm not even sure I'd have fit them all in the frame anyway!

 I looked for flowers everywhere.  This is one of the few that I actually found blooming.

 The day we were leaving on the Glass-topped train, we took a walk through the trails surrounding the visitor's center at Denali.

 I was desperate for anything that was growing..even fungus!

This was the highlight of my time in the park.  As we walked along the path some other hikers told us to keep our eyes out for two moose that were eating back in the woods.  As we walked along the trail I spotted one of the two right on the trail several yards in front of us. The cow (female moose) moved back into the woods as soon as she heard us approach.  We stopped when we heard them moving around.   I felt like I was playing "Where's Waldo?" with the cows.  They were brown and so was the woods. 

They knew we were there, without a doubt!

After several shots, one of the cows had had enough of us and stomped a bit and made some snorting sounds.  Her warning for us to move on.  Paul grabbed and said "It's time to go!"  My plea for one more shot didn't go over well, but I did get this shot as she was warning us!

As we continued up the path we could hear the two cows moving around.  Thinking they may come back onto the path we stopped and waited.  Sure enough Paul caught site of one of them coming out from the brush.  I waited until she was fully onto the path to start taking pictures.  I managed about 8-10 before she moved across the path.  I learned later that more people are hurt and killed from moose attacks than bear attacks.  Kinda scary!

This is a stained glass window in one of the park buildings. 

More flowers.  Even dead ones didn't escape my lens!

We looked all over for the bears, but they escaped us, at least while we were on foot.

Sorry, more flowers.

One of our excursions took us on a bus deep into the park.  Only the tour buses are permitted on these roads. Here were were able to see lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery.

And bears!