Alaska - Denali National Park

After a week in Anchorage we took off on a three day trip up to Denali National Park, about 250 miles further north. We hired a car for three days and drove up to our hostel just a few miles outside the park. As you can see from the road, there wasn't a lot of traffic about when we got up there and the road just stretched on for miles! We had a cute little log cabin called 'Splatter Rock' with its own deck. It was our first time in a hostel so we had to get used to shared bathroom facilities for 3 days! Inside our cabin you can see CK posing on her lower bunk! Mine was the top one and we had a little electric fire to keep us warm (believe me it gets very cold at night here! The last morning there was even frost on our deck!) Across the road was the very fast flowing Carlo Creek and next to that the Creekside Cafe where we had good homecooked food every night - lots of local salmon on the menu and fabulous cakes to drool over! While driving to the park one day we saw our first Moose! Just standing by the side of the road nonchalantly eating the grass. It was very exciting! A Moose on the road! She was quite happy too - just munching on the grass - until a great big truck came by and scared her away! At Denali you're only allowed to drive the first few miles into the park and then you have to take a shuttle bus to go further in. We were lucky enough to see several Grizzly Bears with their cubs, although they weren't as near to the road as we had hoped but were grazing further up the slopes. It was amazing to see them in their natural habitat - just wish I could have got a closer up photo! Never mind - it gives me a reason to go back to Alaska sometime to see them again! With a long lens next time! We also saw lots of smaller animals, like the Alaskan Marmot - a beaver-like rodent. And the little Pika - a mouse like creature otherwise known as 'Rocky Rabbit' - probably because he is usually found amongst the rocks! (He is sitting on the big rock on the left with some grass in his mouth for his nest - just in case you can't spot him!) We saw lots of other animals too such as prairie dogs, ground squirrels, foxes and ptarmigans which are a bit like a pheasant, Caribou and Dall sheep (which we didn't find all that interesting! Well it's just a sheep when all's said and done isn't it?!!!) The best bit was definitely seeing the Grizzlies though and the Moose! It made our day!