Caribou, moose and bears, oh my!

Wednesday 17th July
We got up before 5 in order to get ready and be at Denali National Park by ten past six for our 12 hour "Kantishna Experience" bus tour. Only tour buses are allowed beyond Mile 15 (Savage River, where we were yesterday) so it was the only way to get that far into the park, and apart from the few other tour buses there were hardly any other people around so it was real wilderness. The mostly unsurfaced single road twists and turns for 92 miles. The landscape is a mixture of taiga (trees) and tundra (moss and brush and gravel) and is very beautiful in itself, but of course we were hoping to see some wildlife too!
The first animals we saw were Dall sheep with curly horns high up on the hill. At this point I was having doubts about having come on the tour; such an early start to see a few sheep in the distance! However things looked up when we spotted a group of 5 caribou on the hillside - they have big antlers to the front as well as on top of their heads which made them look very top heavy. Another group of 8 caribou down below the road were even closer to us.
Then we saw a grizzly bear walking along on the spongy tundra and through the low bushes, it looks so round and cuddly and it moved very gracefully across the rough ground. And next came another grizzly bear running quite fast along the low ridge of a hill. After a stop at the Eielson Wilderness Centre we almost immediately saw another grizzly, this time right beside the trail. We got some great pictures of it as it munched away at the grass. Everyone on the bus was so excited that we all bonded and became much more friendly to each other; up until then everyone had been very quiet, probably due to the early start. An elderly lady from California took a great shine to Davie and they had a lovely chat. At about midday we came to beautiful Wonder Lake which is three miles long. We went past there to the end of the road which is the tiny mining village of Kantishna. We visited Fannie Quigley's cabin and the park ranger told us about her amazing life. Born in the mid-west in 1870 she ran away from her bohemian family aged 15 and learned English while riding the railroads across America where she ended up in the gold rush, prospecting and also cooking for the other miners. She left her first husband and walked 700 miles north to the Kantishna area where she spent the next 40 years. She was famous for hunting like a man, gold mining, embroidery and being a fantastic cook and hostess - she was known for her blueberry pies which she made by picking the blueberries, travelling by dog sled hundreds of miles in order to trade gold dust for flour and sugar, and of course  killing a bear to get fat to make the pie crust! She even worked out how to freeze the pies and other food by tunnelling into the permafrost. When her second husband Joe was injured in a mining accident and decided to move to Seattle where life would be easier as he got older, Fannie decided to stay on in Kantishna. She and Joe became well off by selling their mining claims and she had a log cabin built for her by the mining company. She lived there until she died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 74. What a character! I really enjoyed hearing her story.
The long drive back to Denali visitors' centre was enlivened by more animal sightings (caribou, a mother bear with two cubs, a moose) and several toilet stops, during one of which I discovered another dead mosquito in my underwear. It's as if my pants are becoming an elephant's graveyard for mozzies. Just before we arrived back at the visitor centre we saw a huge bull moose munching away at the vegetation beside the road.
We went straight to the 49th State Pub and had a hearty dinner while discussing our day. We saw some amazing sights and I'm really glad that we were able to go so far into the park - right to the end of its only road! However I'm glad that we don't have such an early start tomorrow! We have become very fond of the pub over the last two evenings. It has great service, great, simple food (very generous helpings!) and a bustling, lively atmosphere.