This year for my husband’s birthday we visited Denali National Park and Preserve. Although we have lived in Alaska for seven years and gone to the park a few times, we had never taken a shuttle bus tour or played the typical tourist, so that’s what we did! We stayed in a B&B for three days and two nights in Healy, just ten minutes from the park entrance. Our first day we drove to the park, saw some wildlife before getting to mile 15, stopped and hiked the Savage River Loop, then had dinner at 49th State Brewery where we ran into one of our friends from Fairbanks.
I took 935 photos and am still learning how to process them quickly, so I’m just putting the first day’s photos in this album. The tour photos will be added once I finish them, as well as any I took on the drive home.
Photos taken with Sony a6000 using either a 55-210mm or my 18-50mm, all autofocus since I forgot all the tips my friend taught me about manual focus. Side note: review manual focus techniques, plus learn technique to swap my lens so that I don’t get foreign material on the lens and/sensor due to changing lens in the field. I really dislike photos with evidence of lint on the lens and/or smutz on the sensor!
Parks Monument
View from Parks Monument
Gorgeous views and fall colors.
Fall colors.
Bridge to Nenana. I have no idea why the bridges in Alaska are shaped like this, but they are very interesting to photograph.
We saw this female moose along with a lot of traffic stopped on the road to photograph her. I think this guy was way too close to that moose and kept my distance by shooting with my telephoto lens.
Single bull moose.
Moose! Look! Moose!
Savage River.
Hiking the trail.
Water in motion. Neat effect I’m still working on figuring out. Remember to bring the tripod would help a lot!
Bridge to get to the other side of the trail.
Savage River, looking upstream.
Information.
Bull moose. He turns out to be one of three!
Bull moose.
You can’t see me!
Female moose sees him, but looks away
Two more bull moose!
Are there looking at little ole me?
Are there looking at little ole me?
The expression on his face is so funny!
Look at that guy’s rack!
I look so pretty in the sunshine!
The ears! So cute!!
She knows there are two bull moose there….do you see them?
Gosh, are they really looking at me?
The ears are so cute! I know better and don’t want to get stomped, but I still sort of want to pet her,…..
Hey lady! Look at me!
Hi, my name is Ms. Moose. What is yours?
Give us a kiss!
Oh, never mind.
Train trestle.
Tiny amounts of aurora. (I heard that this same night, Thursday night of last week, Sept 10-11 was an amazing aurora show. I didn’t get much of the lights at all. But I did get a little bit!)
So faint, but my stars are sharp!
Hazy lazy lady aurora.
It’s so nice and dark out here. Look at the sky!
The aurora never really came out before I needed to get back to bed since we were doing a tour the next day…..