Tundra Tour at Denali

Back in January, we all signed up for the Tundra Wilderness Tour inside Denali National Park.  Even at that time, seats were filling up and we had to change from one day to another.

The bunch of us head from the parking lot to the Wilderness Access Center.  We have waited 7 months and were anxious for the tour to start!

During our first half hour, we came across both a cow and a bull moose, very close to the road.  They were oblivious to us, especially the cow who was munching on willow leaves.

We crossed over the Savage River, elevation 2780 feet, during the first portion of our bus ride.

Someone in the bus spotted this caribou grazing on the hillside.....

and then another person noticed the Grizzly bear across the gully and to the right of the caribou.  It looked like each were so involved in eating that they were not aware of each other.

All of a sudden, the bear started running towards the caribou!  A National Geographic moment was in the making!

The caribou bolted!  He was not about to become the next meal for this bear!  I was lucky to get a shot of both of them in the same picture.  You can tell the caribou is keeping an eye on this bear who appears to be more interested in eating berries at this point in time.

Further on, we spotted a mother Grizzly and her cub on the hillside.

Closer to the bus was a male Grizzly who decided to lay down and take nap!  He didn't care if there was a whole bus load of people looking at him and snapping photos!

As we approached the Polychrome Mountains, the driver announced that the two pools of water were called kettles.  They were created by retreating glaciers.

Jerry used his binoculars to get a closer view as Sandy stood behind him.  The views from here were fantastic. 

Here is another view of the multi-colored mountain range.

Don and Gary traded stories as they stood beside the tour bus.  I wonder what they were talking about...

Just at the left of the picture are fellow travelers Norm and Landi Voigt.  This was taken at one of the stops we made at two hour intervals to stretch our legs and use the bathrooms.  By the way, all of the remote bathrooms were pit toilets.  At least they were maintained and didn't smell bad.

We were extremely lucky on our tour day.  There were only intermittent showers which didn't last long and we saw lots of wildlife.  We counted 5 moose (2 up close), 6 Grizzly bears, Dall sheep that were so far away that the bus drive called them Dall drops, numerous caribou and even a family of Ptarmigan!  The Ptarmigan is the state bird of Alaska and I was surprised the picture below turned out.  I was on the wrong side of the bus at that point and the windows were all closed.  It was purely a point and shoot type of shot.

The tour started at 2:30 PM and we didn't get back to the parking lot until 10:30 at night.  We all agreed it was well worth the wait and the money.