The last few days inside Denali National Park has been awesome. We had a few days of bad weather (overcast and rainy) but yesterday it cleared and we got some awesome photos of Mt. McKinley. We were fortunate as many visitors to the park never see the mountain (only viewable 20% of the time) because of the clouds.

We have been on a few backwoods hikes but have yet to see a bear or other dangerous critter, mostly squirrels, marmots and ptarmigans. But we have our bear spray just in case. We can't even describe the scenery in words and photos do it no justice. I guess it is something you have to see for yourself. And we're up for another trip here!!

We will be posting again in a few days as we begin heading towards Talketna (southbound). Thank you all for keeping up on our blog and keep the comments coming.

Dug, shown here, standing on top of a beaver dam at Horseshoe Lake (where many signs were posted to stay off). He was scolded again for being someplace he shouldn't be.

Dug was put on a timeout for his misadventure, although he's still smiling. Bad Dog.

Here we are enjoying a campfire at 11pm. Still looks like daylight because sunset isn't for another hour and a half (12:30am)

Here I am looking for any kind of wildlife on one of our backwoods-off the trail hike. No luck finding wildlife but we did see lots of their scat (poop). When we went to our ranger training class on identifying scat and tracks...we realized we had been standing right next to grizzly bear scat.

This is a Willow Ptarmigan nesting near a trail we were on. They have the weirdest sound of any bird I have heard. If you get a chance, pull up a sound bite on this bird.

On the same trail we came across this Marmot. He wasn't bothered at all by our presence. Very cute.

Here is one view of Mt. McKinley. It's hard to imagine but it is 83 miles away in this picture. It is over 20,000' high. Very massive.

Here is a closer view of Mt. McKinley.

We saw Golden Eagles soaring overhead. These birds are very large with wingspans up to eight and a half feet. They have been seen taking small Dall Sheep off the mountains.

Here is a Dall Sheep that was feeding near the roadside. The last time we were here we saw these from about one mile away.