ALASKA Day 3

THE BUS FROM FAIRBANKS TO DENALI

We put our bags out before 7:00 am and went to breakfast.  The bus didn’t leave until 9:00 and we had time for a walk.  There was a path on the grounds of the hotel and we decided to see where it led. It was a beautiful morning.  The river was like a mirror reflecting the trees along the banks.  The sunlight filtered down through the spruces and birch trees.  The path that went around the hotel grounds was short but pleasant.

At 9:00 we boarded the bus to Denali.  As we got into the mountains some of the streams still had snow in them and there were valleys of cold permafrost where the spruces were very stunted.  The bus driver stopped at a lookout point to let us out of the bus to stretch our legs and take photos.  The view was immense.  I needed at least three shots just to take it all in with the wide angle lens setting. We arrived at our next hotel with time to shop before we had to get on the bus to the Denali National Park.  We grabbed our granola bars and crossed the highway to the shops.  That big buffet breakfast we ate earlier allowed us to lunch on just the granola bars.  I picked up gifts for my list of birthdays and Christmas presents I was looking for.

At 2:00 pm we joined our Natural History Tour in to Denali.  It was to be a five hour trip.  At one point we stopped to take a guided hike there were many wildflowers.  The ground beside the path was spongy with a deep layer of moss. Back on the bus we saw mountains and streams.  The streams and rivers were shallow beds of gravel with a few channels of water.  At one point we spotted caribou in the middle of one of these streams and I took a photo through the window of the moving bus.  When we arrived at the furthest point of the trip we stopped to take pictures and hear a talk by a native Alaskan.  The colors of the mountains and hills as the late afternoon sun peaked out from between clouds ranged from bright greens to dark blue greens to nearly a sky blue.  The rolling hills and mountain peaks with the shadows of the clouds stretching across them tempted me to take a photo everywhere I looked.  
Back at the hotel, we were off again with the tour group for a delicious dinner of ribs and salmon and a fun Alaska theater show.  It was a comedy skit about Alaskan history.  We had a great time.  
You can see a selection of the photos I took at my photostream on Flickr.

Look up alicehuntstudio   on Flickr or try this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36275350@N06/