And the biggest deal for me??!!!

DENALI NATIONAL PARK! This was the cornerstone of my experience. Everything else was awesome, but this was beyond for me. I've wanted to see this park for as long as I've known it existed. It is 6 million acres and the only complete ecosystem that's protected in the United States. It's large enough for all is wildlife so that wardens don't have to drive animals back into the park or introduce hunting to keep numbers healthy.

We had shuttle bus reservations for 9:30 am to Toklat. (which is a river and means dishwater by the way. haha) We got up bright and early so we could have time to meander and get front row seats!

The trip is 53 miles into the park and almost 6 hrs long, but so worth it. In fact we want to go deeper into the park. You wind through lowland scrub spruce terrain up into tundra and on trails etched into mountain sides. At one point, buses had to stop for oncoming buses because you couldn't pass each other on the same cliff road. One lady was having vapors, but I thought it was fun. Anyway, I thought I'd just give you a rundown of what we saw and let the photos speak for themselves. In the beginning we saw mostly ground squirrels that look sort of like a prairie dog, red squirrels and snowshoe hares. They were so beautiful with their soft gray fur and huge ears and feet (the better to hope through snow with!).

By the end of the trip, we had seen 10 grizzlies, 2 while we were standing at a rest stop overlook, 4 caribou and countless numbers of dall sheep that looked like white dots on the mountainside. We also saw a male northern harrier which I didn't even identify right away because I was so not looking for it. :) There were so many other animals to be on the lookout for, like pikas, wolverines and marmots, but they're harder to see.

Enjoy!
Polychrome Pass was my favorite scenic point on the drive. The photos don't do justice to the gorgeous mountain colors and beautiful overlook.
Dall sheep far off on the mountainside. Nice sense of scale huh?
This caribou ran directly in front of our bus. Both sexes have antlers and lose them at different times, but this one is a male.
We were lucky in that we saw this mother and her cub twice. This second time they were much closer to the road. This cub is the only one they've noticed born this spring. They know that because he's such a dark color. In Denali, the bears become blonde as they age. The cub was eating the white bear flowers that only cubs eat.