Alaska Day 12 - Eielson Visitor Center

We started early today on our drive to the Eielson Visitor Center in Denali National Park.  The Visitor Center is at mile 66 on the Denali National Park road.  As we started our trip, we saw a group of caribou grazing beside the road.

Their antlers are still covered with a "velvet" coating that will disappear soon.  Also, the male caribou will lose their antlers in late November or early December while the females keep theirs for protection over the winter.  Soooo - this leads us to believe that Santa's reindeer are either all female or have fake antlers.  What do you think?

We also saw a mother grizzly bear and two cubs.  We didn't get a good picture of all three, but here's a picture of mom.

At one stop we got to "try on" caribou and moose horns.  The moose horns are especially heavy; the pair can weigh about 90 lbs.  Here's Rosie with some caribou horns.

As Mt. McKinley was getting closer, we stopped several time to get a picture.  Here we are with Mt. McKinley in the background or at least clouds where the mountain would be.

I see our road in the distance.

The drop next to the road was rather steep.  No wrong turns please!

We had a brief stop at polychrome pass - so called because of all the different colored mountains in the area.

Our leaders took a group photo at polychrome pass.  Here we are:

One of our leaders, Forrest, got a great picture of a dall sheep.

He also took a picture of us that we didn't even know he was taking.

We also saw a family of ptarmigans - the Alaska state bird.  These are willow ptarmigans.

As I mentioned on the way to the Eielson Visitor Center we took several pictures of Mt. McKinley.  We didn't have a clear view but you can almost get the outline.

We did manage to get a good picture of Mt. McKinley.  One of the members of our group took an airplane tour of the mountain and park.  Here's her photo from the plane.

 Looks like a postcard shot to me!