September 19, 2025
Don’t get too excited….
Today I will drive from Talkeetna to Fairbanks, with an orientation stop in Denali National Park itself. Most of the photos of Mt. Denali I have posted thus far were taken at several viewpoints along Hwy 3. Those stops were all located in Denali State Park, not the National Park, and were about 100 miles from the National Park entrance.
Denali National Park (and Preserve) is enormous. At over 6 million acres it covers 9,446 square miles and is larger than the state of New Hampshire. And I stand corrected on a comment I made a few days ago. Denali National Park WAS at one time called Mount McKinley National Park. Even though our current president changed the name of the mountain back to McKinley, the Park is still (as of this writing) called Denali.
My first stop on the way to Fairbanks will be at the viewpoints I took photos from the past two days. You may recall that the first day was sunny and clear, but coming up to Talkeetna yesterday it was overcast and the snow-covered “Denali Complex” mountains were completely obscured. Today would be somewhere in between.
When I left my Airbnb in Talkeetna I saw two moose (a parent and a youngster) cross the road a ways ahead of me as I was driving back to Hwy 3. I was actually on my phone (hands free) dictating a voicemail message to some friends back home. I remember saying “OMG – there are two moose – gotta go…” and terminating the call but by the time I stopped and got my phone out of the cupholder carrier to take a picture they were in the woods on the opposite side of the road.
I stopped at a gas station when I got out to Hwy 3 to top off my tank for the day and saw this Denali bus.
Strange for two reasons – a) I was 136 miles from the Park entrance, and b) the buses had stopped running several days earlier on a pre-arranged schedule.
After filling my tank and getting coffee I headed for the Southern Viewpoint. This is what I saw when I got there:
I could only see the base of the big mountains. This is a closer view with the digital camera and zoom lens:
I drove a few miles further north on Hwy 3 to the Campground Viewpoint. It wasn’t any better. These are zoomed in even closer with the digital camera.
And here are some other mountains I could see further north in the Alaska Range (with the digital camera):
Those are the last pictures of the mountains from Hwy 3 that I will take on this trip. When I come back up this way for the final time on October 1 I wouldn’t even see the black mountains in the foreground as that day would have extremely low clouds and I could only see about a mile in any direction until I got further north of these viewpoints.
When I come back up Hwy 3 for the final time this trip I will spend 3 1/2 days in the National Park and will have views of other mountains, but for reasons I will explain later it is doubtful that I will see Mt. Denali again.
I will, however, be spending about 2 hours in Denali National Park later today so you will get a first look at some of the mountains I could see from within the Park.
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