Denali 7/2/08

I could stay here the rest of my life. I love it!! We did a lot of hiking today. Drove out to Savage Rock and we could climb the rock or walk the loop trail around the river. We decided to climb the rock first. What an amazing feeling. I went almost to the top, stopping just about 15 feet lower than MM. He says there was a spot higher that you better make sure you had a good hand hold too, because it was straight down. I knew there was a reason I didn't go any further.

Here's a photo of Savage Rock from the parking lot

Here's a shot looking down while hiking

We saw several families of ptarmigans. Got lots of pic of both babies and moms. The adult ptarmigan is about the size of a partridge.


The snowshoe hare has been too fast for me too, up until today. Their back feet are huge and white.

After climbing Savage Rock we hiked around the river trail. I think that said about a mile. It was so peaceful with the water rushing past us and the birds in the grasses around us. We did climb a few more bluffs along the way that looked interesting and really wore ourselves out. We hiked for a total of 3 hours. We weren't sore, but my feet felt like lead. Love, love, love it.

And did I fail to mention that we were in the 20% group? We were privileged to see Mt. Mckinley!! It is usually so high that it is covered in clouds. We saw it all day. There were so many pictures to choose from - we took a ton of the mountain because we weren't sure we'd see it again.

We did see a huge moose today too, but a bus drove in front of us and we missed the shot. We're turning in early tonight so we can catch an early bus in the morning for Eielson. Six a.m. - I thought we were on vacation? Looking forward to seeing lots of animals.