My Reindeer Friends

We take tourists down to the Jetboat Safari tour four times a day and sometimes I drive them down there. The jetboat folks have two reindeer in a pen there for the tourists to see.
I am going to bring them home and put them in the backyard for Snickers to play with. They are my friends.

This is how they looked in May. Still have their winter coat but it was shedding. Note the size of their antlers.

They eat right out of my hand.

This is how they look now. Their antlers have grown. This one still has all the velvet on the antlers

This is the male. Note the size of his antlers. Part of the velvet has worn off of this one's antlers.

Another pic of the same one.

August 5th and 7th...Good Days for Snow

Taken August 5

Mountain I see when sitting in my motor coach while in bus parking at the lodge

Another view taken on August 7.

The mountain I see while sitting in my motor coach in bus parking at the lodge.

Sugarloaf Mountain. This is what we see while waiting for trains at the depot.

We got some snow on the mountain tops both days. Down where we were the temperature was 39 today. It must be August!

Bill Went Up....There??

The buildings up above are the Denali Grand Hotel. It doesn't look very high up but there are about 10-12 hairpin turns to maneuver to drive up there.

I drove a motor coach up there twice (and drove down also) in the past two days to pick up tourists for tours only to find that they weren't there in both cases. But it was a bit of a challenge ( I had driven it once before with one of our supervisors along with me) and there is a great view from up there as you can see below

The Nenana River running more or less left to right, part of one of the hairpin turns.

The Nenana River, The Parks Highway going up and down in the middle, highway bridge and the walking bridge in the center, one of the hairpin turns with part of another in the lower right.

The buildings in the center are the National Park Wilderness Access Center. Somewhere out there is the National Park Visitor's Center and the rail depot.

All the little red roofed buildings are the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, Nenana River in back, Parks Highway in front, some of our buses in the right center.

The Denali Grande Hotel just above the roof of one of the building at the railroad. The rest of Sugarloaf Mountain in the background.

Bill Visits a Coal Mine

The Usibelli Coal Mine is just outside of Healy, where we live. It is the only active coal mine in Alaska. It exports coal to South Korea and Chile. The rest goes to power plants in Alaska.

One of the trucks used to move the coal from the pit to where it is shipped by train to Fairbanks, Anchorage or Seward.

Bill with a hard hat on standing next to one of the tires on the dump truck

Hard to read this but it does say Good Year, Bob.

One of the veins of coal along the edge of the road. All the dirt above the coal has to be moved out of the way so they can get to the coal.

The crane and bucket used to move the dirt out of the way so the coal can be trucked out. Regular sized  backhoes are used to load the coal onto the big dump trucks.

The main boom on the crane is as long as a football field. They pick dirt up on the left and move it over to the piles on the right.

Another view of the seam of coal along the side of the road

A model of the big crane and bucket.

The original tractor used when the mine first opened in 1943. It still runs!

Flowers at Princess Denali Lodge

A headless Ryan (on the left) and his two dogs.

Daisies and Fireweed on a hillside.

Head groundskeeper Ryan keeps these looking good. This is only a small percentage of the hanging plants...there are hundreds!

Denali Landscape

Part of the road with a river bed below. It is a long way down

A few thousand years ago, this big rock was deposited out in the middle of nowhere by a glacier. Known as a Glacial Eccentric.

What other sites are out there at the end of the road?

Denali, the Mountain, is hiding behind those clouds.

Another view of the edge of the road

One of the rivers in the Park.

A Miscellany of Animal Pictures

My little camera does not zoom very well. Also many of these were taken out the window of a bus. But, here are some animals of Denali:

A Snowshoe Hare. See it's big white rear feet. In the winter it changes colors to all white.

A Moose hiding behind a bush. See the little moose to the left. All together there are two Meese, right Katie?

A Caribou hiding behind a small bush. It stood like this for about ten minutes.

A bear from a long way off.

The South end of a North-bound Caribou.