Trip to Alaska

More of Sue's gorgeous photos. :)

September is a great time to visit Denali too

June is a great time to go to Denali. The leaves are still sparse making the moose easier to see and there is abundant daylight. May, however is too early.

DownTheAvenue wrote:
If your main purpose is Denali National Park, then do your research very carefully. They go out of their way to make visitors jump through many hoops to see more than just the visitors center. If you do not reserve your activities, including just viewing the park, you will leave very disappointed.

I have no idea what you mean????

Yes, you need a reservation for the bus tour. No, it's not difficult to get. If you take the bus to Wonder Lake you can see why they don't want hundreds of cars on that road. As far as other reservations, we got 5 nights at Teklanika campground and reserved it about three weeks prior when we were closer to the park. We got an additional 5 nights in Riley Creek campground without a reservation.

If those are hoops to jump through, then we were more than satisfied.

I prefer doing the Ice Field Parkway going south. Most of pullout viewing places are on west side of road. South running makes for safer and easier off and on stops.

RVs can only go in on the main park road as far as the more distant RV campground. If you want to go in further (and you should IMHO), you will need to take the park bus trips. Look carefully at their schedules and book in advance. Last March, we tried to reserve a trip on the day and time we wanted, and there was only one seat left, which didn't work for the five of us. We were able to reserve 5 spots on an alternate day. Best wishes for a safe and fun trip.

Glenn,
My wife and I are also traveling to Alaska this summer and were thinking it would be great to caravan with another couple. We are visiting Yellowstone NP during the last week in May and plan to cross the Canadian boarder 1 June. Let me know if you are interested in joining up.

Paul

If your main purpose is Denali National Park, then do your research very carefully. They go out of their way to make visitors jump through many hoops to see more than just the visitors center. If you do not reserve your activities, including just viewing the park, you will leave very disappointed.

We have made 3 trips. You can read our trip logs in the website posted in my signature.

PM's for additional info will be responded to.

Take a generator if you can and don't be afraid of dry camping. The commercial campgrounds in Alaska are nothing special but the public ones are great and the ones we stayed at had large sites. But it was dry camping. Denali has the best dump station I have ever seen (and fresh water fill). We stayed at an RV park in Cantwell and checked in to Denali the day before our stay. We were given all out paperwork for our arrival the next day. We arrived early, dumped our tanks and were lucky enough to get a double wide spot in Riley Campground. The Church's campground book is essential because many campgrounds do not have traditional addresses and you have to enter Lat/long into your GPS. We loved every minute of our trip in 2014 and plan to return in 2017.