We boarded a modernized school bus and headed out. Our bus driver was a naturalist and majored in biology. He really was knowledgeable and spent a lot of time exhorting the beautiful, untamed and unpopulated by humans, virtues of the parks. Only one road. You must come out the way you go in. No power lines-a true wilderness, unspoiled by man. The road is 93 miles long and unpaved, but we only went to mile 62. The mountain ranges are awesome with miles of tundra at their base. The permafrost in this area is 1000' deep, consequently, the vegetation does not attain great heights and the higher up you go trees are nonexistent. Along the way, we saw a total of 3 grizzlies, 2 bull moose, a wolf, 10-20 Caribous, dall sheep and numeous birds and smaller animals (I can't remember all the names) . We caught a brief glimpse of the summit of the mt. on the way to the viewing point, which was a good thing because the smoke started coming in and obscured the view later. Our box lunch contained reindeer sausage which was very spicy and good. At the 62 mile point, we were offered hot chocolate and /or coffee. On the ride back, we continued to see Caribou and Moose. There are no Elk in the park. A large number of our group was seen napping but I won't call out any names:-)
After browsing the gift shop, we went with Dave, Maddie and Dottie for an ice cream and headed back to our rigs.
Tonight we had a combined social with another Adventure group. Their trip is only 37 days long and they were all tired. We are too but we have days to rest between stops. This being a tourist is hard work :-)
Denny and I decided not to eat dinner as we had lots of snacks at our social. Tomorrow, we and eight other couples are going on a float trip down the Nenana. They aren't picking us up until 12:30. We might browse around the shops for a while or we might decide to just be lazy. Stay tuned!
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