Morrows to Alaska 2014: Healy and Denali

Finally, a great wildlife day!
We started out the day by taking a bus in Denali Park to visit the sled dog kennel and watch a demonstration of the sled dogs in action. Some of the dogs wanted to be petted and others just stayed in their dog houses out of the rain. Then we listened to a ranger talk about the care and usefulness of the dogs. The dogs certainly were ready to go pull the sled. When the rangers went to get them, they got so excited and jumped, lunged, and barked. They then hooked them to the sled and they pulled it around a track. They used 5 dogs but when there is a heavy load, more were used, of course. It was very enjoyable.

After lunch, Jeff, Marcella, Gary, and I drove the 17 miles into the park that is permitted for private vehicles. We saw a huge bull moose with massive antlers. He seemed unconcerned with the observers sitting on the road. When we got to Savage Creek, which was as far as we could go in our vehicle, there were 3 caribou across the creek. They too just continued to feed as many tourists took pictures. Of course, we weren't super close to them.

On the way back those 17 miles, Gary spotted something quite far away. He first thought it was dogs but with out binoculars we could see 4 wolf pups and then to our delight, the large mom came into view for just a short time. We watched the pups, through the binoculars, of course, as they played. We did report the sighting to a ranger at the visitor center because they had reported that there had been few sightings of wolves lately.

When we got back to Healy, we drove around the town a little. One stop was to explore the bus that was used in the film Into the Wild. If you are familiar with the story or have watched the movie, you know the story of how Christopher McCandless came to Alaska to live in the wild, found a Fairbanks bus and lived in it. He tragically died there. It is controversial as to whether he starved to death or ate poisonous plant. This is a very abbreviated version. Most of you probably know more about it than I do. I need to get the movie and watch it again.