Date: 24 June 2001 (Sunday)

Start:

End: Denali Grizzly Bear CG, near Denali NP (0 miles)

It was 54f and a little cloudy when we got up. Late in the afternoon, it reached 80f and more cloudy with haze and possibly smoke from a forest fire north of here.

The Anchorage Daily News today published an article saying the driver of the car in the accident we saw yesterday was pronounced dead at the scene. She was 42 and she was wearing her seat belt. The article says she lost control after hitting a dump truck towing a tandem trailer loaded with dirt and rolled into the median. The driver of the truck did not stop (he might not have known anyone hit that trailer). I didn’t see the truck, I suppose because I was behind the tour bus. That’s sad news.

We ate and went to Denali Park where we took the Horseshoe Lake trail hike. It was cool in the spruce and beautiful scenery, but the mosquitoes are now out for blood and the small flies are hatching out. I haven’t used any Deet but I’ll be forced to use something soon to keep off the critters.

Speaking of critters, the four-legged kind almost entirely disappeared today. After the hike, we took one of the tour rides into the park. No moose, no sheep, no bears, nothing with four legs was to be seen. In defense of the animals, it has been very dry here, and they had a bad fall last year, so their numbers are down. We did see a golden eagle, a Harlequin duck, and a harrier hawk, all new to us.

One of the tour bus stops was at an old camp site used by rangers before the park tours became popular.

The tour was nice but a little buggy, and school buses have never been my idea of comfortable travel.

The big mountains were not visible today due to the clouds they generate under some conditions and some haze.

We went back out the road as far as one can go in a private vehicle by ourselves, just in case an animal decided to come out. None had, we still saw nothing.

So we gave up on Denali for this time and returned to the trailer. At the park, we called son Bill, and caught him at his hotel on Maui (at the bar, having just arrived). He’s there this week on a comp trip from his company. He’ll be back in Virginia early next Sunday. We caught up on things and let him return to his fun.

We’ll be off for Fairbanks in the morning. We’ll have to pass fairly close to the fire on the way there; I hope it’s not blowing the smoke onto the highway.