Eielson, Denali

The next morning we took a 4 hour bus ride into the center of the wild, to Eielson. The trip was on a muddy dirt road in the rain and sometimes snow. We encountered a couple of moose, a herd of elk and a mama bear and her cub. There were several stops on the way to clean the mud off the bus’s windows.

When we arrived in Eielson it was raining and a few degrees from freezing. We sought refuge in the exploration center to get warm before heading back outside to walk the trails. A sign informed us: "17 hours and 5 minutes of daylight on that day and there was a 7 minute loss from the day before." Mt. McKinley was supposed to be visible from Eielson’s vantage point but the surrounding cloud obscured the view. I walked a trail to an outcropping overlooking the McKinley River and it began to snow. The silence there was truly deafening. The on the ride back we saw a fox, the Alaskan state bird (ptarmigan), and a moose very close to the road.