Denali National Park

We didn’t see Denali while we were at the park, but this was a pretty view!

Day 11 August 2,2025

We boarded the Denali Star train from Anchorage to Denali. It rained overnight and was cloudy this morning.

The train ride is almost 8 hours. There was so much beautiful scenery along the way. On a nice day, there are several places you are able to see Denali, but we saw mainly fog.

We hadn’t been planning to do any driving on this trip, but I discovered that the cottage I reserved us is six miles from Denali NP and they don’t have a shuttle and the nearest Uber drivers are in Fairbanks, 2 hours away. I was able to rent a Turo car for Denali. We picked the car up at the Bus Depot at Denali. The car is a 2011 Cadillac, a huge boat! The first thing we did is go to the VC and get our passport stamp. We also toured the visitor center and watched one of the movies. The VC is beautiful. Next, we drove the main Denali Park Road.

The main road is open to all vehicles for the first 15 miles. From mile 15 to 43, the road is gravel and only park buses and people camping in the back country are allowed. The road used to go 92 miles to a little village called Kantishna. You can still get to Kantishna, but you have to fly there.

In August of 2021, park officials closed the road at mile 43 due to what they called the Pretty Rocks Slide. I thought this was a huge avalanche type situation and was wondering why four years later, it wasn’t open yet. I learned that this is NOT a swift landslide. This section of road was built across permafrost. Higher local temps accelerated melting of the permafrost and the road began sliding more than a half inch per hour. It became impossible to maintain the road as it was. After studying the situation, it was decided to build a bridge to span the unstable area. Building a bridge in an area that is difficult to access with a five month construction season has been difficult. They’re making progress, but the full length of the roadway isn’t expected to be reopened until the summer of 2027.

We also learned that Denali National Park sits atop two large faults and experiences several minor earthquakes per day!

We stopped at Mountain Vista, 14 miles down the road. It is one place that when conditions are right you are able to see the mountain, Denali. The rain had stopped and some watery sun was shining down, but the clouds in front of the mountain were thick. We enjoyed the pretty .7 mile loop hike and drove back to check in to our little cottage at Denali Grizzly Bear. The Woodcutter’s Cottage is a 12 x 14 cabin that originally stood in Fairbanks. It was abandoned. The owner of Denali Grizzly Bear took it apart, moved it and reassembled it. It is rustic, but warm and dry. The bathroom is a pretty good walk away. It feels much like camping in Calypso!

We drove to the little town of Healy to find some dinner. We split a savory crepe. We checked out a couple shops and looked at a few resorts on our way back to our little cabin. We took our photo with the park sign.

Day 12, August 3,2025

We heard raindrops on the roof through the night. The rain stopped though by the time we got up.

We drove to the Bus Transit Center for the Tundra Wilderness Tour. There are several kinds of free park shuttles and there are several types of paid tours. Our tour was a four hour tour with the purpose of spotting wildlife. Everything was very well organized!

We didn’t see anything along the first 15 miles that are open to everyone. At the checkpoint to enter the restricted part of the road, a Ranger got on and welcomed us with a song.

Home “Denali version”

The Big 5 of Denali are grizzly bear, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, and wolves. We saw all but moose and wolves on the bus tour. Many of the sightings were from a good distance away, so our photos aren’t great, but it was still wonderful to see them.

This caribou was far in the distance. The driver had a camera that he could project what he saw onto screens in the bus

After the bus tour, we watched another film about the history of the park and then ate our lunch. I went for a short walk. It started to rain. I suggested we take another short drive to see if we could see moose. We drove to mile 15 and sat by a river for a while. Nothing was out. On the way back, there were brake lights ahead. We stopped and there were a bull moose and a cow just off the road. Yay!

View through the sun roof when we actually had sun for a few minutes

We went back to our cabin and looked at our photos and went to bed.

Day 13, August 4, 2025

We drove to Fairbanks to see what it was all about. We drove by several wildfires on the way. In Fairbanks, we went to see the University of Alaska- Fairbanks campus. Then we drove to North Pole, AK. We took pictures of the North Pole sign and ate lunch at a cute cafe. The woman who waited on us said it gets 50 below zero in North Pole in the winter!

We had fun at North Pole. But we didn’t get to see Santa.

After lunch, we went to see The Museum of the North. The building had very nice architecture and great historic exhibits and art by Alaskan artists. We visited an arch composed of various animal antlers.

The design is meant to mimic a crevasse on a glacier

The sun came out on our way back to Denali. And just before we returned to our cabin, we saw a moose cow eating fireweed along the highway!

Day 14, August 5,2025

It was raining again this morning. We didn’t let it stop us. We checked out of the log cabin and packed up the car and went to the park. We were practically alone on the Horseshoe Lake Trail. It is about a four mile trail through a beautiful forest and around a lake. We saw a lot of evidence of beavers. The rain stopped about 2/3 through the hike. Rainy hikes can be really beautiful and peaceful. We returned to the Visitor Center and watched another film. Our bus back to Anchorage departs at 2:45 PM this afternoon. We had to return our rental car to the train station and make it to the bus depot. When I checked our bus reservation, I found that I had misunderstood where the bus pick up was. It wasn’t from the park. It was from the Denali Park Village. If you’ve never been somewhere before, you have no concept of where things are. Well, Denali Park Village is six miles from the park. It’s actually across the street from where we stayed while we were here. We had a little scramble to figure out if there was a shuttle we could take and if it would get us there on time. We did find a shuttle and it did get us to the pick up spot in time! Whew! Until next time Denali! ❤️