Shuttle bus tour June 18

This was our mode of transportation  to Eielson Visitor Center.  It was  8 hours for the round trip.

  The rule was, yell "stop" if you see wildlife, and the bus driver would pull over.  The first "stop" was for a merlin bird, which surprised us.  We were thinking more in terms of big wildlife, like bears and moose, not birds.

We were on the lookout for the "big four".  Grizzly bear, caribou, Dall sheep, and moose. 

We saw Dall sheep in a number of different places.  We even saw 2 males butt heads together,  which should have resulted in a major headache for both of them.

Timberline in the park is at 2,700 feet. 

The area consists of taiga, or northern evergreen forests, with sparse, thin spruce and tundra. The tundra areas consist of dwarfed shrubs and wildflowers. Denali's unique subarctic region is home to over 650 species of flowering plants, along with mosses, lichens and algae.

 A big grizzly bear.

A herd of caribou.

Eielson Visitor Center at mile 66 on the Park Road.  It is an excellent place to view Mount McKinley when it's not cloudy. 

By the time we reached the Visitor Center, it was raining, so there was no view of "the mountain" that day.  The ride back was much faster, because it was raining, and I think we were all tired of sitting on the bus.