One of Tuesday's wolvesCopyright 2007 Lydia Hinshaw
DENALI NATIONAL PARK, AK -- We started the day watching fox kits wrestling while their mother warily scanned the surrounding tundra.
We finished it staring at a lone caribou, who was trying to look comfortable lying in a rocky drainage.
Some days we don't see many animals on my 110-mile bus run. And then there are days like Tuesday, when the animals just kept appearing, as if they couldn't resist the sound of a diesel.
There were two grizzlies, quite close to the road, with three buses stopped to watch. The other two buses left, and since we'd been the last to arrive, we stayed around perhaps three minutes longer.
This proved an important decision, because the two buses ahead of us were long gone when the two wolves walked right out in front of us about four miles later. I stopped on the right side of the road, and the wolves paraded by on the left.
It would have been hard not to get a decent picture.
Up on top of Polychrome Mountain, the two Dall sheep rams with the impressive headgear (featured in a post a few days ago) were on duty as usual. My passengers were beginning to believe I was some sort of animal magician.
Coming home, a marmot waited outside his den to pose for us. Still later, a roadside moose ignored us in plain sight.
And finally, when we'd traveled 95 miles without spotting a caribou, one turned up in an area where I haven't seen caribou for weeks.
If you come to Denali, you can pick up a free brochure that has a checklist for animal sightings. My passengers were surely up late Tuesday night checking off boxes.
They didn't even mind missing Mount McKinley, which remained hidden by clouds all day.
We finished it staring at a lone caribou, who was trying to look comfortable lying in a rocky drainage.
Some days we don't see many animals on my 110-mile bus run. And then there are days like Tuesday, when the animals just kept appearing, as if they couldn't resist the sound of a diesel.
There were two grizzlies, quite close to the road, with three buses stopped to watch. The other two buses left, and since we'd been the last to arrive, we stayed around perhaps three minutes longer.
This proved an important decision, because the two buses ahead of us were long gone when the two wolves walked right out in front of us about four miles later. I stopped on the right side of the road, and the wolves paraded by on the left.
It would have been hard not to get a decent picture.
Up on top of Polychrome Mountain, the two Dall sheep rams with the impressive headgear (featured in a post a few days ago) were on duty as usual. My passengers were beginning to believe I was some sort of animal magician.
Coming home, a marmot waited outside his den to pose for us. Still later, a roadside moose ignored us in plain sight.
And finally, when we'd traveled 95 miles without spotting a caribou, one turned up in an area where I haven't seen caribou for weeks.
If you come to Denali, you can pick up a free brochure that has a checklist for animal sightings. My passengers were surely up late Tuesday night checking off boxes.
They didn't even mind missing Mount McKinley, which remained hidden by clouds all day.
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