To Teklanika Camp in Denali National Park

First stop was to pick up our reservations which allow us to camp at mile 29.1 inside Denali National Park. Teklanika "Tek" campground is the last camp in which private vehicles are allow to drive to. The rest of the 92-mile park road is only open to the Parks Shuttle Service and private tour buses.

Oh yea, because we drive a motorhome, we had
to leave the truck near the Riley Creek Campground in a special parking area until our return out of the park. Take what you need or go without!

There is a check point at Savage River, 14.8 miles in. You have to have Tek Campground reservations in hand or you don't get past this point.

Continuing along when we saw a bus stopped, we stopped to look also because usually they were looking at an animal. Note this commercial tour bus has been painted "Denali Brown" by the muddy dirt roads. Denali buses are kept a lot
cleaner than this one!!!

We saw our first Moose sighting within the Park because someone else had seen it first and stopped..

Sometimes the scenery looks like a lot of other roads we have traveled down, but Denali is so much more. The expanse of space is amazingly vast!

Other experiences offered within the Park are the (1) Tundra Wilderness Tour; wildlife viewing and narrated tour of the park to Toklat River-mile 53. (2) Natural History Tour; narrated tour of the park to Primrose Ridge-mile 17. (3) Kantishna Experience; narrated tour to historic gold mining area located at the end of the park.

A Road Lottery is offered yearly allowing those who won the lottery to drive their personal vehicles through the park-all 92 miles. Up to 400 vehicles a day are allowed and only between 9/12 & 9/15. How much fun would bumper to
bumper traffic be? I liked the bus system just fine. They worry about the road and I got to look around.

Of course, there are still a lot of Ranger-led walks and hikes.
And plenty of hiking trails for the serious hikers. These
folks require the back country permits to stay overnight.

Denali Park's ecosystem remains healthy and intact because of the continuing effort the keep the park "preserved and protected for future generations". The Park describes their ecosystem as "a sustainable community of living
organisms functioning together with all the non-
living physical parts of an environment". The Park works hard to keep the park preserved when it was created as Mount McKinley National Park nearly 91 years ago.

Siberian Aster

When the Teklanika Shuttle Stop came into view, we reached the limit of travel via personal vehicle and time to set up camp. To catch the
bus going beyond this point, we had a time schedule and waited in this shelter. Just grab the bus going to your desired destination.


More of Denali National Park & Preserve in the next log, #2.

BBYN, Karen and Don