Up bright and early, a quick bowl of cereal before heading out to the bus stop at about 6:30. Our bus arrived a little after 7:00 (and was far from the first bus, numerous Tundra Wilderness buses came by first), and we loaded up onto an old but refurbished (or at least repainted) school bus. The driver got us a couple of lunch sacks, which also had a bunch of snacks in them to get us through the day, and we headed out, the bus only about half full. First order of business was to start spotting wildlife, and did we ever! During the first few hours, we saw Dahl sheep (well, white spots on the side of the mountain that we were told were Dahl sheep : -), caribou, a rare red fox (the woman at the Nature Center later told me she has worked here for 5 or 6 years and never seen one!), grizzlies and ground squirrels. We made several bio stops along the way, and munched our turkey wraps after the Nature Center. Finally we reached the end of the line, Mile Marker 92, which is as far as the road goes. Along the way, we had picked up a ranger who proceeded to fill us in on all the history of the town of Kantishna, and in particular a resident names Fanny Quigley, who sounded like a real character, but whose mark on the place is still evident today. There are a couple of wilderness lodges out there, and a busy airstrip that houses the Kantishna Air Taxi, and was evidently quite a popular place, as two planes landed in just the time we were there, which wasn't long. It was interesting history, but we really didn't need a ranger to walk us through it, so we found that part of the trip a little tedious. Back on the bus, and the trip back was even more wildlife, with lots of bears, including a mama grizzly and her two two-year old cubs, who walked right across the road in front of a bus that was parked in front of us, then up the side of a hill right next to us. More grizzlies were in a ravine below us at another stop, and I spotted a HUGE caribou with a giant rack which the driver stopped for. FINALLY, we saw some moose, the elusive moose I've been searching for ever since we arrived. We only saw females and a few babies, though, no big bull moose, but we saw plenty of those. It was a great day, everything we had hoped for! Except, of course, the elusive Mt. McKinley never peeped out of it's cloud coat, remaining hidden throughout the day, as it apparently does most of the time. Thank goodness we did the K-2 flightseeing last week! Arrived back at the campground bus stop around 5:00, and we had a nice dinner and settled down for the night.
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