A bonus late-season trip to Denali.

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With continued nice weather, we decided to get in another trip to Denali. After the tour buses shutdown for the year the park road is open to private vehicles out to the Teklanika rest stop at mile 30. I went up on Thursday with the motorhome and parked it at Riley Creek campground. Devany drove up on Friday. That way we have the car there and could take the bikes out to Tek and then mountain bike the road out to East Fork.

Unfortnately they were trying to dart and radio-collar grizzly bears in that area, so the road from the Tek rest stop was closed to hiking and biking. We had to satisfy ourselves with biking from Tek back to Riley Creek, around 30 miles one-way.

We got lucky and had incredible weather the five days we were there. We got to see a couple of big moose and a couple of bears in gorgeous fall colors and late afternoon light. Denali was out while we were there and on the drive home.

Of course when we got home we had the best animal sighting of the trip—a huge bull moose right next to our house! What a welcome home.

Too many pictures as usual. Come along for the ride.

First Aurora of 2023-24!

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Last night and early this morning the skies finally cleared over Anchorage and I got to shoot my first aurora of this season. There was a lot of moisture in the air, so it started out a bit hazy, but cleared as the night went on—in fact we had our first frost of the year. Looking forward to a really strong aurora season this year. Click on the images to see full-screen.

10th Anniversary of BWB-Biking with Bears in Denali.

This trip marks the 10th year that we’ve been mountain biking the road inside Denali National Park & Preserve. We've pedaled thousands of miles in those years, and we've loved every single trip. The times we've had the entire road to ourselves and the times we've had adrenalin pumping encounters with "curious" bears. The joy of being able to sit for hours watching wolf families grow up. Rain, snow, mud, flood. From sunny blue skies to biking in blizzards when we could barely see the road in front of us. It's still our favorite place on earth.

This trip was one for the books. We biked in driving rain and 40-50mph winds which literally blew us to a stop at times. And boy, did we share the road with bears this time! Come along for the ride. Click on the thumb-nails and cursor over the pictures so the captions can tell the story.