The next day we had tickets for a much longer bus ride. There is only one road here so the first part we were pretty familiar with. We were also quite hopeful since the weather forecast, and the skies, were boding much better for Denali sightings. We did not see much of any wildlife on our way to Polychrome Pass, but this was mid-day, not evening like before, so that was to be expected, but after Polychrome Pass, we began to see more animals including bears, a sow with three cubs, beavers, lots of caribou, though none as close as the night before, and as usual, no wolves either :-(

Folks always tell you how they just saw a wolf on a previous bus ride the day before. But they are pretty elusive and right now have pups in dens. They whelp here later than in the lower 48, so I believe pups are just now about 4-6 weeks old or so. Perhaps some day I will see wolves up here, but alas, not on this trip.

On the other hand, there were sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. dalls sheep that is. These are white mountain sheep related to the big horn sheep down in the Lower 48, but they are smaller and very white. I managed to get quite a few photos through the bus window, including this nursery group with several lambs.

The visitors here were incredibly friendly. It was like we were all in some sort of mini-seminar or the like. "Where are you from?" was a very common question. My BIG lens also drew a lot of attention, sometimes people had me simply pose with it. Now, there were other photographers in the Park with such lenses, even bigger ones than mine, but they were folks with permits to drive in and they had camouflage on their lenses (I guess they must have been bird folks) so perhaps this made the lenses enviable ;-) Regardless, I was very glad I had this lens. Even with a doubler, which made it a 1000mm f8 lens, I just barely got decent photos of the animals. I wonder if I could rent a 1200mm f5.6 lens next time? ;[-) On this second day, our bus was headed all the way to Wonder Lake. This is a very large glacial lake where many photos of Mt. McKinley have been photographed in the background, sometimes reflected in its waters. Well, not only did we not have a mountain in the background, we just had clouds, but the bus only goes to the west end of the lake and you need to be along the south or the east end to see the mountain, assuming it is visible at all, in the background. I guess you would need to be on a camping excursion where you spend several days here. Of course, right now would not have worked well for it was hot, it was humid, the air was thick with mosquitos and there was no mountain to be seen at all. Perhaps a 3 day visit in the fall sometime would work better? When we were at Polychrome on our first day, I had gone up the ridge to take in the view while Jeanette went in the opposite direction and photographed some really nice looking wildflowers. After seeing what she got, I had to take some myself on our second pass at this stop. I ended up having to purchase a book of Alaskan wildflowers to try to identify what I photographed and as far as I can tell, the yellow flowers are Hooker's Potentilla, a Cinquefoil (Potentilla hookeriana) which is in the rose family. I think the purple flower is some sort of oxytrope which is in the pea family, but I'm not 100% sure.

Further on down the road, we came across a tiny little bird. The bus driver was the first to spot the bird, but I suspect she knew the likelihood of spotting the bird here since it was obvious from all the guano that this was a common roost. I believe she said it was a Gyrfalcon, or something to that effect. Apparently this is a special sighting for those interested in spotting birds, but since none of us on the bus were bird watchers, this special sighting was met with considerable apathy. However, I did manage a few photos. Even though I was using 1000mm of lens, the falcon was quite small. This second photo is a cropped version so you can see it slightly better. A bit further down the road we saw a photographer along side of the road so we knew there was something special about. It was a grizzly bear sow and three young cubs from this spring were on the opposite side of the road. They were not terribly close, but they were close enough that I could not get all four bears in the same frame. Oh well, at least I got a few snapshots of them.

Aside from the people, the flowers and the wildlife of course, another memorable part of our trip this second day were the buses. For one thing, we got Darlene Huss, our driver from the day before as our driver this second day. That was pretty cool.

There was a problem though. It was that 'her' bus had issues. Big issues. Namely, if she stopped the bus, as they often do when they stop to see animals, it did not like to start up again. In fact, at one point, it simply refused to start at all.

Well, we ended up on another bus, and having to move all my equipment was not difficult, but it was somewhat annoying all the same. Then, her bus ended up starting after all. She met up with us at the Eielson Visitor Center.

This place is a great spot to see Mt McKinley when it is visible. I have never seen the mountain from here...

Only 20-30 percent of Denali visitors see the mountain at all. In three trips, I have at least seen it once, but not from here - in fact it was at a distance of 70 miles -- whereas you can be as close as 26 miles to the mountain from the road at Wonder Lake. Oh well.

So, what is this really cool looking mountain shrouded in clouds that I photographed from the Eielson Visitor Center? It's Mount Brooks which is 11,960 feet, about half the 20,300 foot height of Denali.

So, we got on our old bus again, and guess what? It would not start up. Argh. Eventually it did, but believe me, it was not turned off at all for the rest of the trip.

Our bus ended up picking up quite a number of passengers on the way. It became quite crowded.

Meanwhile, we did manage to get some photos of a bull moose sitting in the willows, several beaver on a pond right beside the road, more mountains, snow-filled valleys, and back at Eielson Visitor Center, some Arctic ground squirrel photos...

On the way back, Jeanette and I noticed that other buses coming in at Eielson were pretty empty so we switched buses. That worked out well for we had plenty of room to bounce back and forth between the left and right sides of the bus depending on which side animals were on. Then, further up the road we came up on a small accident. One of the buses in front of us had gone off the road. Nobody was hurt at all, they were fortunate that this was at the bottom of a canyon and not hundreds of feet up a cliff, but their bus was out of commission, our old crowded bus now in front of us was packed -- standing room only. Well after some minutes of just staring at our near empty bus, those on our old one, got off that bus, got on ours and well, we were crowded once again. We went 5 more miles up the road to the next stop, ended up getting off yet another bus and onto our last of the day. On the way back, we saw yet another bus broken down and stranded but fortunately, already disembarked so we did not have to take on anybody new.... It was not a good day for buses in Denali.

However, it was a good day to photograph ungulates! Caribou were especially abundant - all bulls of course since the cows were off calving somewhere in their calving grounds, but the bulls were nice enough to take photos of, especially with their antlers in velvet. However, one was too young to have much antler growth. He was a young one trotting down slope. I panned along and got a nice movement photo. I also managed to get something similar with a beat-up looking cow moose. She looked like she had at least one bear encounter and was pretty scared up. She was also without her calves. They were probably eaten by a bear (they take quite a lot of calves here).

There was a caribou resting in the snow. Either he was trying to keep cool, or maybe he just found a spot which was relatively free from insects. Warble flies, bot flies, all really nasty flies here...at least if you are a caribou.

I particularly like the caribou scratching. I can't tell, but either he was scratching an itchy foot with his antler, or he was scratching an itchy antler with his foot. Either way, it was a cute photo.

We got back to the Visitor Center a bit late, but not too late to get a bite to eat in a really beautiful restaurant way up on a hill across from the Park. These places stay open late and it makes sense - the tour buses get back late. In fact, we met several groups from the various buses we were on up there.