Road Lottery in Denali

Every summer, the National Park Service holds a lottery for the opportunity to drive your own vehicle into Denali National Park. Normally, the 93 mile park road is closed to (almost) all private vehicles and travel in the park can only be done on park buses. The park officially closes on a Thursday in mid September and the following 4 days are open to 400 vehicles per day on the road. The fee for entering the lottery is $10 and this year, there were over 6,000 entrants. We had enormous luck - (perhaps it was fate's way of rewarding me for a season with lots of rain and some difficult clients???) - and won a spot on the final road lottery day.

Fall in Alaska normally starts in late August and is marked by lots of rain and cool temperatures. This year has been no different, but we managed to experience Denali in the best possible fall weather - blue skies, sunshine and late fall colors on the mountains and tundra blessed us for the duration of our stay.

We drove 6.5 hours up to the park on Sunday, stopping for short hikes and lots of photos of the glorious colors and soft lighting that signal the end of the continuous sunlight of summer. We set up camp at the park entrance and got to sleep early.

The following morning was our day in the park and we got going before sunrise (at this time of year it's 7:30 AM). Within the first few miles, the pink glow of the rising sun illuminated the far-off peak of Mt. McKinley, the gem of the park and North America's tallest mountain (20,320 feet). As we drove farther into the park, the mountain became more and more glorious until it was almost too much for us to look at her anymore.

We spotted several wolves and even learned that there are several all black wolves in the park. One lone wolf even walked directly down the road toward our car as we gaped in awe. We watched beavers working diligently on storing away branches of birch trees high up a rocky slope (we had no ideas that beaers would or could climb so high and so nimbly). We saw several groups of grizzlies (mostly sows with 2 cubs) , Dall sheep, golden eagles, a fox trotting down the road towards us, and most excitingly, a wolf and a grizzly boar (male) having a stand-off over a cache (stash) of caribou meat taken from a recent kill.