Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 370
We got off the ship and became land lovers for a few days hoping to see Mt. McKinley or Denali which ever one you want to use. We stayed in the Kenia Wilderness Lodge one night and took a walk down to the river looking at plants and listening to birds along the way. A new bird for me was a Varied Thrush which had a sweet song. Down at the river there were some Common Mergansers on a gravel bar in the river and a pair of King Fishers on a power line across the river. Even had a Great Horned Owl heard on the Merlin app. Lots of the wildflowers were in bloom which surprised me as many of these same wildflowers at home still aren’t blooming. What did bother me was all the cow parsnip which was along many of the roads we traveled and even throughout the woodlands in many places we walked. In some places it was already three and four feet tall and in flower. At the last lookout on that trail, we looked into the river and there were some big rainbow trout spawning in the rapids right in front of us. The female would flip on her side laying eggs in the pebbles, and the males would come over and spread milt on these eggs. There were two females and four males working in the same area and the way this current was flowing you would wonder how many of these eggs would ever make too hatching. That was something that I had never witnessed in nature before. We showed our driver who had taken us down to the river and some other visitors who were walking the trail. While we were there some rafting fishermen went by not knowing these big fish were there. At the cabin we stayed in there were a pair of Violet Green Swallows who had nested in a knot hole right over the porch. They fledged the morning we left.
From there we traveled over to McKinley Wilderness Lodge where we also only stayed one night. We walked a couple of trails there and there were a couple of moose with calves around the property, but we didn’t see them. We went to a wolf presentation that night and a wildflower, nature presentation the next morning. Erin and I walked up the Tree House that morning and we saw bear scat right next to the trail and a moose had also been down that trail as it left evidence behind. The tops of the mountains were in the clouds, and we did have just a little light rain that morning, which was the only rain we had so far. Mt. McKinley was hiding in the clouds as it did most of the time. They said only ten percent of the people who visit do get a chance to see this beautiful peak. While traveling to this lodge we passed some woodland Bison feeding close to the road, but I got no photos. This is the first time I have heard of this species and I’m glad that I got to see them. They even had young ones. It was once thought extinct, but some were found in a remote area and reintroduced and doing well. They are longer legged than the Plains Bison and given their name and living more in the woods than the Plains Bison they eat more woody vegetation like moose do.
From here we moved to the Denali Wilderness Lodge and from there we took a bus trip into the Denali National Park. It was a beautiful day with big puffy white clouds hanging over the snow topped mountains. Just before the first rest stop daughter-in Law Kelly spotted some sheep way up on top of the mountain, two rams with nice curls silhouetted against the blue sky. Not too much further my son Jason spotted a bull caribou close to the road. Then up high on one mountain laying in a big snow patch were fifteen caribou. No bears were seen today but just before our turnaround point a big bull caribou was seen walking along a riverbank with some other visitors in the park walking close to it. The scenery was spectacular during the trip. When we came back out, we traveled over to the visitors’ center and right along that road was a cow moose and her calf eating shrubbery right beside the road. So, the only thing we missed seeing was a bear.
Every place we visited talked about all the snow they got last winter, and they were talking feet of snow which is not normal. You could see where this snow had been pushed off roads and parking areas with big equipment scaring the vegetation in those areas.
Only a couple more days here in Alaska but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Bull caribou
