Fotolog - Saturday

This is a full shot of our bus. A guy named Larry drove and guided our way through Denali National Park, 6 million acres of protected land (4 million of which was added in 1980.) It's a converted school bus but the seats were actually really comfortable.















Along the way Larry encouraged us to yell out when we saw wildlife so he could stop and we could take pictures. The animals we were told to look out for were grizzly bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep and wolves. The only one we didn't see were wolves. Paresh will post some nice wildlife photos later but here is a cool one I took of some rams sitting up on a ridge.















We also stopped along the way for scenic views.















At around 12:30pm we arrived at Denali Lodge (mile 89 of the road into the park) where we enjoyed a buffet lunch and we got a choice of activities to take part in. Of course we opted for panning for gold.















Prospector Todd.















I think Paresh was the only one panning that day who was conscious of how gold was doing in the market.















As we began to futilely dig the sand from the shore of the stream where we were panning, the guy who was running the gold panning activity told us, sort of on the down low it seemed, that he brought a bucket of sand from another spot on the river and to try the dirt from there. So we did and sure enough we each found a flake of gold. You know it's gold because when you pinch it with your fingernail it bends as opposed to flaking off. Here's my huge gold nugget laminated onto a piece of cardboard (note this picture is not to scale.)















While it didn't take long for the weather to clear up as we entered the park, the drive back was even more beautiful. And we were lucky enough to spot the elusive peak of Mt. McKinley. I was stunned by how high above the rest of the mountais it actually was. See it here poking through the clouds on the right.














Overall we really lucked out with the animals and scenery we were able to see. A great cap to a great trip.