Journey to Denali National Park

Denali National Park is a must seen place, it's not just about the park or animals. It's the wilderness, the mountains, and drastic weather changes. We will witness different weather in the park, one side of the park is raining, another side is sunny at the same time. It's a magical place where you will gladly lose yourself to nature.

On my first visit to Denali back in 2016, I went to the Eielson visitor center and we were able to see many Grizzly bears with cubs as they were eating berries to fatten up for the winter. This year, we booked a campground at Wonder Lake campground to watch the reflection of Denali mountains in the lake and I even got the yearly lottery to drive into Park. But unfortunately, due to the heavy rains this year in August, there was a landslide in the park road so they closed the road at 48mile and canceled our lottery and campground. We were disappointed but we still planned to go ahead and visit Denali.

After we finished the tour in Anchorage, we started our drive towards Denali National Park. On the way, we stopped at the park on the side of the highway to have food. It was so cold, but we had the right food to make us feel warm, we had biryani, yep!! there are multiple Indian restaurants in Anchorage, so we were in luck. We took a quick break to finish the food, then started our journey. Last time, we couldn't stop at a viewpoint on the Denali Hwy so this time, I had made a note to visit the viewpoint, so kept the map for the point and we stopped there for some time. When we were making the turn into viewpoint, we saw a black bear was crossing the road, but couldn't take the picture of the bear.

From this viewpoint, we can see the Denali mountains but they were covered in clouds, so we waited for some time. It was worth the wait, we witnessed a beautiful sunset over the mountains. We were not able to see the black bear again but we saw a coyote on the bank of the river. We took a couple of pictures and started our journey to Denali.

The Denali highway was so beautiful with surrounding mountains, sunset, and fall colors. Finally, we reached our hotel (Denali Park hotel) around 11 pm. We kept all our luggage inside the hotel and got fresh up and then went out to see if we can get a glimpse of the northern lights (Aurora Borealis). We drove towards Fairbanks and luckily, we were able to see the northern lights. The Kp index was low, so northern lights were not visible clearly without a camera lens. We spend almost an hour watching the northern lights, took a couple of pictures, and went back to the hotel.

“This is why I choose adventure, always.” - Unkown