Chapter V

On Thursday, the 11th day of our trip, we awoke early and drove to Denali Park joined by Dan’s granddaughter.

It was another dreary, mostly cloudy day with some rain showers. But, being brave adventurers we signed up for the 11-hour bus tour to Wonder Lake and back.

Ansel Adams took a famous picture of Mt. McKinley over Wonder Lake at one time. Due to the cloud cover, all we were able to see of North America’s highest mountain was its summit several times.

The bus ride to Wonder Lake ventures 80 miles deep into the Park. We saw five grizzly bears, over 100 Dall sheep, five moose, 20 caribou, two fox and two golden eagles.

The vistas were partially obscured by clouds. The bus made a few rest stops along the way and took a short break at Wonder Lake to give riders an opportunity to stretch their legs.

As an aside, looking at these photos reminds me of the limitations of my old camera that I toted along on this Alaska trip. It was a Nikon D70s with a Nikon 28-200 lens.

Oh, to have had my current Nikon on the trip. A valuable lesson indeed – – – next time take a high quality SLR with a very good telephoto lens!

A good choice would be a Nikon D7100 with a Nikon 70-300 VRII lens.