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Denali National Park

First stop on the Great Southern Loop trip was Denali National Park. It's only a couple hours south of Fairbanks. It's beautiful, it's huge, it takes a full day bus ride to get all the way to the interior (almost 100 miles each way) and we had about 2-3 to spend. Mt. McKinley is rarely visible, since it's often cloudy and the 20 thousand foot tall mountain is surrounded by 5 and 10 thousand foot tall mountains.

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 3M). 55 pictures included.

The Road to Denali

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We stopped at a pull-off just before getting to Denali. This was on the Parks Highway (Route 3 from Denali to Anchorage). Here are a few picturesof the hills in the area.

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More scenery and hills by the pull-off. The river is the Nenana River (the sign can be seen in the full-size picture next to the stop sign in the first picture in the previous set).

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More pictures near Denali.

Mount Healy Trail

The Mt. Healy Overlook Trail was somewhat steep in places (25% grade, 1700 foot elevation change), but offered a very nice view of the area. I stopped to rest a few times. Stephanie plowed ahead.

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The middle picture is the trail map and describes the different hikes. The first and last pictures are of some ice near a stream visible as we crossed a bridg before getting to the start of the trail.

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A few pictures of the trail, as we climbed. At that point, the trail was wide enough for two people. This was on the flat area, with Mt. Healy visible in the distance. The middle picture is a view of the area as we worked our way up the trail.

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More views of the area as we climbed up. It was cloudy, so we couldn't see too many mountains in the distance but the view was still quite nice.

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Higher and higher, until we got to the top of the trail. And then the top of the overlook trail. The trail continued onward, but we decided to stop, enjoy the view and return, since a car ride awaited us and it seemed like the trail went on for a while.

The View from Mount Healy Overlook

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Some picturs of the Nenana river and the valley. The mountains and clouds. There's a seaplane visible in the middle of the third picture. It's a dark dot against the clouds in the "bigger" version, and a bit more visible in the "huge" version. We could hear a number of small planes during the hike.

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These shots were looking to the side (west?). They're of a small mountain, with some gravel going down it, and a close up of the gravel (sadly, blurry).

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The first picture is of the Mt. Healy trail as it continues beyond where we hiked. Just to the right of the peak, the trail passes through some rocks that seem to be built up into a small wall. Two shots of the mountains looking out to the south, the last shot being a close-up of one of the mountains. The stark black and white color patterns make it look like a killer whale.

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Two picturs of the grassy hillside that was on one of the mountains that faced us (looking south, I think).

The Trip Back Down or Butterflies

(Or Butterflies, Butterflies, and more Butterflies)

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A butterfly on a flower, a flower, and the flower on the trail, with Stephanie in the dsitance.

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A sequence of pictures in which a small plane (Cessna) landed at the little airport. It's in the valley, next to the mountains. It requires a fairly tight approach hugging the mountains and must have some challenging winds.

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The first two pictures are of the valley extending beyond the airport. In the third picture, there is a plane (a small white dot, about a third of the way in from the right side of the picture, in the middle, below the mountains, circling around the canyon, setting up to land at the airport.

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Another picture of the plane continuing its turn (it's more or less in the middle of the picture). And then two pictures as it was coming in to land.

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Three pictures of butterflies.

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More pcitures of butterflies.

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A bee in a flower, the trail down, and one more blue butterfly.

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One last picture of a butterfly. A picture of Stephanie and me. And a picture of three butterflies.

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