The last night in Fairbanks we got to see the Northern lights. This is the best my camera could capture. It was a spectacular light show with green light weaving across the night sky. We then took the train to Denali National park. Along the way was hillside after hillside of gold.
We were able to spend entire day inside Denali National Park. Are day started off great when we spotted this moose several miles away.
It took about another 15 minutes of driving to spot this grizzly. This bear blended in so well that half the time we had to wait for him to start moving in order to see him.
One of the few glaciers. I am saving most of my glacier pictures for later. But one of my favorite things of this picture is that it looks like the water is about to run down the mountain and somebody hit the freeze button. :)
About 10 minutes later we spotted this grizzly. We stopped to watch it for a few minutes when we spotted...
Her cub...
and then we saw her other cub. HAPPY!! HAPPY!! HAPPY!!
We moved on and came across another grouping of grizzlies but they were camera shy and this was the best I could get. There are 3. The number 3 was a good number this day :)
The closer we got to Mt. McKinley-Denali (it depends on who you talk to) the windier it got. This is my best picture where you can see the tip of the mountain and a lot of the base of the mountain. I kept thinking the moutain is just where the snow is and then I would take a step back and realize that all the brown mountain at the bottom is the base. :)
You can't tell from the picture with Mom and Dad but the wind was close to knocking us over.
This was the turn around point. You have to have a special permit to go farther. We turned around and within 5 minutes we ran into another mommy grizzly and her 2 cubs.
One of my favorite parts of the day was coming up on this group of Dahl sheep. They were so close so I could get great photos and it was amazing to watch as they walk on this rocky ridge and never stumbled.
We then got a close up look at this gorgeous grizzly.
The park considers you had an excellent day if you got to see all of the big 4. Moose, Grizzly, Dahl Sheep, and the Caribou. We were thinking we would not get to see the last because it was the wrong season to really see them and then we spotted this one in the distance. HOORAY!!!
The icing on top of the cake we saw this moose right at the edge of the park.
This is where we stayed while in Denali. The river right below the lodge is where we started our white water rafting adventure. Because we were rafting we didn't get any pictures but there was 4 class 3 rapids and 2 class 4 rapids. It was a blast and even Mom will admit she had fun. I might even be able to get her to go again. :)
