The Train to Denali.5

This is it. Mt. Mckinley

Mt. McKinley, where are you?

By the time we arrived at our destination, the sky was overcast with low clouds. We stepped off the train and walked over toward the visitors center to the bus stop. Shuttles are offered free of charge. This keeps the park road from becoming congested by slow moving cars. A special permit is required to drive the park road anywhere past the ranger station.

We climbed aboard the Savage Shuttle and patiently waited for tourists eager to photograph wildlife and 22,000 ft mountain peaks. The bus ride is a 13 mile trip to an over look of the "High One". As we traveled the two lane road the driver gave us a lesson in viewing and photographing wildlife. "Passengers, you may be able to see a moose off to the side of the road. I expect you to notify me if you see any; I will keep my eyes on the road. I will slow down and stop, if you simply call out the word wildlife. You will not be allowed off the bus to take any photographs. Keep your heads and hands inside the windows, and above all else, keep your voices down. Loud voices could trigger the wrong response from wild moose. We can't spend much time; I have a schedule to keep." We slowly  approached a few campers and a bus the size of ours that were stopped in the road. A gaggle of binocular and camera laden people were also in the road trying to get that telephoto shot of a wild animal. "Darn people," our driver said, "That's not the way to do it!" More than half of us on our bus scrambled to the starboard side of the bus,  craned our necks, only to see nothing and we moved on.

Finally we made our destination. This is where we were to be able to take some of those timeless photos of Mount McKinley - photos that could be seen in coffee table books, as screen savers and Google Images all over the world!Things happen, and this was one of those days where we were only able to see the foothills. The breath taking peak was swallowed up by clouds. I didn't allow this to ruin our trip, so I made the most of it and tried to take a few photos of what was available to me.

We were invited back on the bus and made our journey 13 miles back to the bus stop. Once again we slowed to a crawl. The same goofy group was still in the road squinting through their viewfinders. One of our fellow passengers exclaimed, "Look, there it is!"

A male moose crowned with a glorious rack was hidden in the trees. "Do you see it? Get a picture," the man behind me said as he encouraged his wife. We were at a stand still. Nothing. Only movements of the tree were to be seen. The bus lurched slightly forward. We held our breath. "I got it," I whispered to my husband.

"We need to move on, or we will be late. I need to keep on schedule", our driver announced. The driver eased down the road "We didn't get a picture. We should have stayed in California." The man behind me spoke with discouragement. David asked "Trish, you got one didn't you?" I looked at the image on my digital screen, "yeah, but it's really teeny."

I managed to shoot more valleys and those wonderful colors on our way back to the bus stop. It was still cool outdoors and I asked David to open his window as I apologized for the draft to our fellow passengers.  Our driver announced that there was a vista just before our final stop. My camera and I "burned up more film" as they said in the days before digital and I was fortunate enough to save some more fall colors to my cameras memory.

Denali will not go away, but my next visit may not allow me to capture the autumn colors available for a few short weeks.

There is a bit of a sad ending to this part of my story. The following morning I decided to edit my pictures (delete the duds) before downloading them to the computer and making that part of it easier. Have you ever had one of those pictures where all you got was a stupid tree? Delete. Tree. Delete. Stupid Tree. Delete.... uh, oh. ...That was my moose picture. I was a bit mortified. I will never get that image back, but oh well, if it's that hard to see the moose in the picture, it wasn't a good moose picture. But, gee, he had such beautiful horns and the couple from California thinks I have it to treasure forever. Oh, well.

Since then there has been a little consolation prize. "Moose!" David was driving and pointing. It was about a week after our trip to Denali National Park. There they were, a couple of females nibbling on dinner in the Moose Lot. The photos I got aren't worthy of a postcard, but they made it to the blog, dated September 16th.