[You may view a Denali National Park brochure with map in PDF format here.]

I awoke at 7:10 before the 7:20 alarm. There was solid overcast when I had my normal breakfast. Our tap water had a definite iodine odor. :( I thought I had detected an odd odor last night after loading up on water at Riley Creek, and now I'm sure we'll be able to enjoy the nasty-tasting stuff for several days. :( We headed to the bus stop at 8:25 to pick up our guaranteed seats on the bus to the Eielson Visitor Center. We got on the bus at 9:17.

We stopped at the Teklanika rest area just down the road, which is a regular stopping point for the buses because it's about an hour in from the park.

After leaving the Teklanika rest area, we stopped to watch two Dall sheep way up on a hillside. While most passengers were excitedly watching the dot sheep, I was looking around on the other side of the bus and saw a grizzly bear with a cub come around a ridge. After I casually mentioned the bears, everyone switched sides of the bus to look at something much more interesting. After a short time, a second cub came around the ridge. They were too far away to photograph, but it was still nice to watch them for a while. We left the bears and stopped for a group of five Dall sheep way up on a hill. As we were heading up to Sable Pass, we entered the bottom of the cloud layer. It started raining lightly at 10:05. Four caribou were walking along the river near Polychrome Overlook.

We stopped at the Polychrome Overlook at 10:30, and there was a red fox on the road. The fox ran up the hill by the time I got out to try to photograph it. We left at 10:39 and continued heading west.

We didn't get very far before we came across that same red fox as it caught an Arctic ground squirrel. I was able to get some decent images by handholding the 100-400 against the top of the open window. We left and then went right past another red fox sitting by the side of the road cut.

We stopped at the Toklat River rest area for about ten minutes to take advantage of the pit toilets. There's a tent structure with a bookstore there now that wasn't there on my last visit to the park.

We went over Stony Pass at 11:36. It's the highest point on the park road at 3980 ft (1213m), and on a good day, it provides the first good view of Mt. McKinley along the road. (Mt. McKinley is not visible at all from the park entrance.) If Mt. McKinley is visible, buses usually stop so people can enjoy the view and take pictures. Because of the solid cloud layer, we just kept going. Went by three harriers within a short distance: two flying and one perched. We stopped to view and photograph a group of willow ptarmigan from the bus. Then we stopped to view and photograph a grizzly bear sow with two cubs fairly close to the bus. Unfortunately, we were just below the cloud layer and the visibility wasn't too good. I wasn't too excited about the photographic possibilities because of the poor lighting conditions. However, the subjects themselves were extremely interesting and I was only using pixels instead of exposing film, so I photographed them.
We reached the new Eielson Visitor Center at 12:10. It's anther good location to view Mt. McKinley when it's out, but our view was blocked by a solid layer of clouds. The new visitor center was completed last year, and is a much nicer facility than the one it replaced. It's built into the ground and doesn't block the view of Mt. McKinley from the parking lot. Instead of admiring the non-view, we just went into the visitor center, reloaded our water bottles, and had lunch (Clif Bars for me) in the small eating area. We got back on the bus at 12:37 and departed at 12:43 to head back towards the park entrance.

We stopped to view some willow ptarmigan and then nine caribou way down on a river bed. When the bus stopped at the Toklat rest area, I stayed on the bus.

When we stopped at the Teklanika rest area, I put away my camera in the backpack and noticed that the finish on the pentaprism housing was scratched from the backpack zipper. :( My "brand new" Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III has been christened. After that, I was quite careful to operate the zipper in such a way that it wouldn't scrape across the pentaprism housing again.

We got off the bus at the Teklanika Campground at 2:55, and it was 43°F (6°C). I downloaded the images I took, and the shots of the grizzly bear sow and two cubs were as uninteresting as I thought they'd be. Took a shower.

Had dinner around 6:00 of J's chicken enchiladas. The enchiladas were tasty as ever, but the fresh guacamole wasn't that good because the avocados weren't quite ripe. I did the dishes.

I read the Denali Summer Times park information magazine, and the sky started getting brighter. The rain stopped at 7:05. I went outside to walk around and came across a snowshoe hare. I went back to the RV, got my camera, and went to photograph the hare. It was skittish and I was only able to get a few half decent images before it bounded away into the brush.

I came back to the RV and then packed things to go camping at Wonder Lake.