I'm finally getting this stuff! It's all crammed together but perhaps I can finesse it a bit soon. Also, the first pictures I upload come out at the bottom - so it's all backwards! The bear is so cute from the inside of our parks tour bus. Took this picture last Friday on my day off. The bears are in their hyperphagia stage - and they do LOVE blueberries. We found extremely fresh bear scat on our hike - and it looked like blueberry pie filling - Our guide had his bearspray and called out a lot. I liked that hike WITH a guide!!! This next picture was also taken last Friday - Mt. McKinley from the northeast view. That's Muldrow Glacier that you can see. It's 35 miles long. It's the route that the sourdoughs took in about 1913. The native Alaskan and gold miners up at Kantishna didn't want the rich, uppity mountaineers to be the first to summit Mt. McKinley, so gathered at a bar, they decided to ascend the mountain themselves. They had some doughnuts and some hot chocolate. They also took a 14 foot pole with them which they intended to set into the ice at the summit. They expected that it would be seen from Talkeetna so people would know they'd been up the mountain. It was much harder than they'd expected - but luck (and perhaps more) was with them. They summitted Mt. McKinley in 18 hours and all of them survived. Today, mountain climbers train all year, spend weeks ascending and this year four more died in the attempt.


This is another view of Mt. McKinley. See the road on the right? There's one road into the park - 90 miles long - unpaved and single lane. It's quite a ride.

Finally, below, I just wanted a picture of the tourist busses that were parked together near McKinley. I wish I'd taken more pictures of Eielson Center - but perhaps now with my new skills, I can be more picturesque with this blog!

It was a beautiful day for Mt. McKinley. I hope I find the pictures I took along our hike - this may actually be one of them.

8/26/09

Tomorrow April and Chris and Leilah will welcome another daughter to their family. It has been a long and difficult pregnancy and will be a relief to have mother and daughter do well!!