Spent a wonderful day riding the shuttle bus out to Wonder Lake in Denali. Got there at 7am after stopping for a boxed lunch that I’d called in the night before at a cafe close by and some coffee. Once there I grabbed my prepaid ticket and boarded. I was a bit late getting there so it was back of the bus for me. Worked out OK because I had the seat to myself pretty much all day.
The bus ride took about 10 hours so there was plenty of time to see everything. The weather was predictably cloudy and wet and although that kept the landscape pictures down, there were still some good opportunities to get pictures of wildlife. The way it works on the shuttle bus is if you see something worth stopping for (animals) you yell, “Stop!” to the driver and they’ll hit the brakes and back up to where the action was. 5 minutes into the ride some guy yells it out and we all peer outside to see what out first viewing of the day would be. It was a tree. That guy never said a word for the rest of the trip.
It didn’t take long for us to rack up some good actual wildlife sightings. We ended up seeing 2 sow grizzlies with 2 cubs each, a bunch of Dall sheep, lots of moose (with antlers this time!), caribou (with antlers) and even a fox.
The bull moose sighting was the best one because I was the one who yelled out, “Stop!”. Got props from the bus driver for that one. 
On the way back we stopped at the visitor center which sits at about the half way point and the rain had turned to snow and the temperature read 35 F.
Randy, my shuttle bus driver for the day, came out and picked me up and after a pit stop at the store for food we headed back here. Of course its still raining out so my relaxing evening is shot. I’ve kind of planned my spots for the next couple nights but I’m pretty much going to head south until I get out of here because Alaska’s weather is too much fun for me.
Update: Stuck my Denali pictures up this morning. They are pretty awful. Distance and rain make for bad pictures. Oh well. Still glad I got to come up here.
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