Denali National Park & Grant's Birthday

It’s Grant’s birthday and we are headed into Denali National Park for a 12 hour tour to Kantishna in Denali National Park. Private vehicles can not drive there so you have to take a tour if you want to go that far. It’s a rainy/fooggy day so we won’t see Mt. McKinley. We’re glad we chose to see it by plane yesterday.

One of the things we learned on the way to Kantishna was that we were now members of the 70% club. 70% of the folks that come to Denali National Park never see Mt. McKinley. It is nearly always hidden in cloud cover.

We saw two wolves on the trip. Since there are only 59 wolves in 6 million acres of Denali National Park, I would saw we were blessed. The moose antlers are from two moose that locked horns in battle and then could not separate. So, they died of starvation. Sad, but apparently it is a somewhat common occurrence.

There was lots of Fall color: reds, orange, yellow, gold and green. Janine took dozens of pictures of the hills just to get all the colors. She said she was imagining how they would look in a quilt. Janine and Kristy have always wanted to go to the Smokey Mountains or New Hampshire for Fall color. Who would have guessed they would see it in August in Alaska.

Fannie Quigley lived in Kantishna. She was a character and a survivor. She was famous for her blueberry pies. The secret ingredient was bear fat. She was a miner, gardner, hunter, dog musher, and a fisherman. She escaped an abusive first husband by loading her belongings in a dog sled, and pulling the dog sled herself. Her second husband left for an easier life in Seattle, but Fannie toughed it out here.

I think we have seen bear and/or moose nearly every day since the girls have been here.