DENALI the TALL ONE

We are at the entrance of the 6 million acres of wilderness preserve formally known as McKinley national park. Denali is home to many birds and mammals, including a healthy population of grizzlies and 18 wolf packs. We went to a ranger lead talk about wolves and although it was well presented by a young black girl from Alabama on he first stint as a park volunteer we did not hear much that was new to us. Many US organizations are in love with TLAs [ three letter acronyms ] and she was no exception as she introduced us to the BMW danger and what to do. Bears play dead if they make contact, Moose run away and with wolves try and convince them you are the pack alpha.

We hope to see as much wildlife as possible, herds of caribou roam the park, dall sheep are often seen on mountainsides, moose feed on the aquatic plants of the small lakes and swamps and wolves
have been seen on the road between the entrance and our campsite.





We had to book our site last year as there is only one drive in RV park inside Denali and competition for the 53 available is fierce. I was made very happy when the young lady behind the campground checkin desk recognized my accent, saying I sounded like that other famous imposing, muscular yet light-footed, debonair, 6’2” Scotsman, Sean Connery. (Carol's comment.....He's never gonna get over this, I haven't told him yet that he is going to have to live up to the image, that should deflate his ego. What she said was, "Are you Scottish ?" I asked her how she knew a scottish accent and she said "Sean Connery" )

We dragged ourselves out in the rain today to go to a sled dog demo at the Parks kennel. It was very similar yet eerily different to the other musher’s kennel we had visited. The dogs were all gentle,
bred in the kennels, housed in boxes and chained to posts. We actually got to see the dogs being harnessed to a sled and set off round a short course pulling the musher on a sled with wheels.
I suppose the differences related to these being load pulling dogs rather than pure speed merchants and pure bred Alaskan huskies. BROADBAND NEEDED

SLED DOG DEMO



SLED DOG PUPPIES




MUSHROOMS NOT MUSHERS
The rain did relent long enough for us to get out for a longish trolley push with Charro

round some of the tracks through the taiga forest at the entrance to the park. We were surprised by the variety of plants carpeting the floor and a profusion of different types of mushrooms.

We drive in to Denali to the Taklanika camp site on Friday morning and the weather forecast is finally improving after days of low cloud and cold driving rain. After this our next stop is Wasilla, home of the largest Walmart in Alaska which sells more duct tape than any other store in the world!