Day 97: Snow in Denali National Park

July 20, 2014

Snow!! Yep – been complaining about all that rain. Today we had snow. Well, it was actually raining and 42 in the campground this morning but just inside the park it was 35 and new snow at just slightly higher elevations and it's July 20! These mountains had no snow yesterday. We were told it could and has snowed any day of the year in Alaska and guess we believe it now. It was a cold blustery day.  By the way – it's still raining tonight.

 

We headed out about 6:15 this morning to look for wild life in the park. We found the snow and rain and two moose. We spotted the moose a pretty good distance from the road, but just sat there and watched and waited for them to come to us. Of course, when they got to the side of the road it brought other people too.

 

 

Anne could almost pet this one.

After that we had to get loaded up to leave the Denali campground. We moved to the Visitors Center for the Day with plans to go to Denali RV Park and Motel this afternoon. It's the same park we stayed at with Barry and Donna. Full hookups, a short distance out of the hustle and bustle of Denali. 

Interestingly, we got an e-mail this morning before we left the park from Wanda and Jeff who have been following the blog. They wanted us to give them a call and see if we could meet. Well, guess where they were? Yep – Denali RV Park and Motel. We met Wanda and Jeff at the ranger program at the Visitors Center. It was great to make some new RVing friends from Louisiana. Hopefully we can get together at the campground later.  What fun to meet someone due to the blogging!

Today the ranger presentation was on a joint mission between Denali NP and Gates of the Arctic NP to clean up some old 55 gallon drums miles into the wilderness in Gates of the Arctic NP – above the arctic circle. It was old military debris. The project was completed last winter when it would cause less impact to the tundra. They used two snow machines and three dog sleds for the project.

We didn't find any churches close by to the park today so we listened to a couple of sermons from our home church, Lester Memorial UMC, again today. We sure miss everybody there.

Tomorrow we hope to meet with the historian at Denali regarding some of Aunt Jean's pictures. One more day here then we plan to move on to Fairbanks.