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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Our Heaven on Earth - Denali National Park

We will never forget the six weeks we spent at Denali National Park  as volunteer campground hosts.  It was such a great experience, we met so many wonderful people from all over the world.   Here are two LO's I did using some old BasicGrey pps  - trying to clean out my stash!

Tags says:  Scenes from the campground that we hosted in Denali National Park.  The river is the Teklanika.  That is the Alaska state flag flying with "Old Glory".

Journal says:  Once a week we went deeper into the park to the Toklat work camp to do laundry; this was another 24 miles deeper into the park. The drive to Toklat was through prime bear viewing territory, and we did see some bears; but what we saw nearly every week was this group of Dall sheep hanging out at Polychrome Pass. In all the years that we lived in Alaska and visited Denali, we only saw the sheep up close and personal once. And here we were seeing them every week.

The sheep were almost always on or near the road. One day they were walking towards us right down the middle of the road. All we could do was shut down the engine and wait for them to amble on by. They stopped right in front of us and peered in our windows. I could have easily touched them. One was no more than two feet out my side window. I guess we spent 15 minutes or more waiting for them to get by us. Meanwhile behind us were some professional photographers that I bet were just so envious of us! Yay, score one for the average Joe, sometimes the professionals can be really rude trying to get their photos.

The Pass is aptly named for the brilliant colors in the surrounding hills and mountains. The pass sits up high and overlooks glaciers and the valleys they left behind. The road through Polychrome Pass is not for the faint of heart! It is a series of sharp curves and steep hills. The entire road through the park is gravel and Polychrome Pass is extremely narrow! There is just enough room in some places for two school buses to pass each other with maybe a foot to spare. As we drove through there, I was chanting, “No bus, no bus, no bus” for my fear was meeting an oncoming bus and having to squeeze by. It was scary when we were on the side of the road with the drop-off like you wouldn’t believe! I closed my eyes a lot!




Here's another LO of those Dall sheeps from Denali. Again using up some old stash, BasicGrey Origins and T Holtz Lost & Found.


Thanks for stopping by!!



1 comment:

  1. What a fantasic experience Maggi! Love the journalling!!!

    ReplyDelete

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