Summer Vacation 2010: Denali National Park Campsite

After we got off the train, we found our way over to the check-in area for campsites just before the last bus to the campsite we'd be staying at left.  It might have been a long while waiting to see if someone in an RV or car would be willing to drive us to the site otherwise!  Luckily, we'd reserved our campsite early; most sites were full.

We stayed at Teklanika Campground, inside the park, notable of all the Denali campgrounds because if and only if you stay there you can purchase a "TEK Pass", which allows unlimited bus rides as often as you'd like during your stay as long as you do not return to the entrance.  We'd only briefly tested our camping stove prior to this trip, so we were a bit concerned about having enough food if it didn't work, but it was nothing that paying for more bus rides to the front entrance couldn't fix if necessary.

We headed out on the bus with our minimal gear (as compared to both the serious week-in-the-wilderness backpackers and the people driving RV's), carrying one big hiking pack, one Camelbak daypack, and an insulated bag full of food.  In Denali, there is only one road (92 miles long) through the park, which is the size of Massachusetts.  Cars are not allowed past Mile 14, with the exception of cars/RVs staying at Teklanika, professional artists, and a small number of season passes.  We learned that the buses there are more like  safari buses than just public transportation vehicles.  If you see an animal, you can yell "stop" at any time and the driver will stop the bus so everyone can drop the windows and take pictures of the wildlife.

First animal sighting, two moose

There are many animals in the park, including moose, caribou, wolves, foxes, rabbits, lynx, bears, sheep, and an assortment of birds.  On our ride in, we saw some grizzlies and some moose, as with bits of amazing scenery peeking through the fog.  We could have taken the bus to the turnaround point and gotten off when they passed the campground on their way back out of the park, but it would have been quite late at night at that point and we were still a bit tired and jet lagged.  We also weren't sure how late it would remain light enough to put up the tent and have some food.

Our little tent in our campsite made for RVs

In the camping area, there were some of the nicest outhouses I've ever been in with antibacterial gel to clean your hands:

Real doors and everything!

Bear lockers to store your food:

They're upgrading these, but the old ones look cooler

Bear-proof garbage cans:

Very sturdy

And only a few campsites available. We snagged one that was fairly close to everything we needed without being right next to the outhouses.  It was also towards the middle of the campground, giving us a protective layer of people the bears could eat before getting to us.  Bears don't tend to come into campsites, but as most other campers in that particular area had cars or RVs to hide in should a bear come, we wanted to be extra careful about leaving food around where it could lure bears to our site.

After getting the tent up, testing out our thankfully working stove equipment, and inflating our sleeping pads, we had an excellent night's sleep and were quite thankful we had our eyemasks. We could definitely read books well into the night there without artificial illumination.