April 1, 2026 – johnboystravelblog

October 3, 2025

Overall, the weather today was better than it was yesterday, but there were still waves of dark clouds passing through the area. Once again, I could only travel on the first 15 miles of the road into the Park. I had already taken lots of photos of the various mountains and again focused much of my time looking for animals. I would either crawl along the road in my car or park and walk along the road, keeping my eyes peeled for animals.

Here are more of the things I saw as I drove and walked up and down the road:

I returned to the place on the road where there was a plaque showing where to look to possibly see Mt. Denali. In the two photos above there is a faint image of a mountain in the distance but I honestly don’t think it is Mt. Denali. Even if it is, you can’t see it clearly so I really don’t think it matters. Given the general visibility and clouds moving through I doubt that it was visible. Having seen it two weeks ago it was pretty much fully covered with snow and there seems to be too many dark spots in these photos. There will be others later in this post.

There is a huge gap of time between the time I took the photo above and the next mountain picture I will post. I honestly don’t remember what I did during that time other than continue my search for animals. I know I spent a good bit of time at the high spot on the road just before the bridge, scanning various areas with binoculars.

At one point I had driven towards the Visitor Center, turned around and was coming back in and there were several vehicles stopped by the road. That almost always means an animal sighting. Sure enough, other visitors pointed out a cow moose, probably two hundred feet off the road. I got my digital camera out and was able to zoom in and get these photos. She was in an area with pine trees and scrub brush, and didn’t move very much.

After two and a half days of searching I considered it a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

I believe the two mountains in the distance (above) are the lower “black” mountains shown on the sign. The distant mountain on the right is just below the words “North Peak” on the sign, and the one further left is the long mountain which goes over to where Double Mountain starts to rise.

This is Double Mountain…

… and Denali, if visible, would be about 2/3 as tall.

I have looked online and haven’t seen an image that was taken from that spot.

You can see that by late in the afternoon most, if not all, of the snow that had been plowed off next to the road had melted.

That’s pretty much it from inside the Park for the day. The next post will be of a small village out on the main highway just north of the Park entrance. As you will see, just about everything there was closed, and most of the shops were literally boarded up for the winter.

I will come back into the Park for part of the day tomorrow before leaving to drive up to Fairbanks. I can tell you now, there won’t be many photos.

October 3, 2025

When I awoke for my second full day in Denali National Park it didn’t appear to have snowed overnight but I was in the town of Healy, which is 20 miles north of the entrance. The temperature was still right around freezing and so I didn’t leave until about 845am. I stopped for coffee and food for breakfast and lunch and proceeded to the Park.

The highway getting to the Park was wet but not slippery.

When I arrived in the Park and climbed up the hill to get to the part of the road which had the best views, I discovered that it had snowed there and there was a little more accumulation than there had been yesterday. I did hit a slick spot as I rounded a curve while climbing the hill and slowed my pace a little bit.

Again today, there clearly had been some traffic, mostly going in, but I think it was construction workers who were able to go deeper into the Park.

The sun was out but there were dark clouds on the horizon.

I drove back down to the main Visitor Center parking lot to update family and a few friends via text messages. There is no cell signal once you venture away from the Visitor Center so I would always retreat to the parking lot to send or receive messages.

When I got back up to the main road I discovered that the maintenance crew had plowed the little bit of snow that had been there about 30 minutes before. In addition to a small staff of rangers (to make sure visitors behave, and help with any problems) evidently there was a skeleton maintenance staff on hand as well.

There were clouds moving much as they had the day before, but there were more periods when the sun was out so I was able to get some mountain photos with the new fallen snow.

There were more dark clouds moving in but it turned out to be a little bit nicer weather than it had been the previous day. Hardly any traffic. At one point I stood outside the car at the high point on the road just before the Savage River bridge for 20 minutes and never heard a sound. Pretty remarkable for being on the only road in a major National Park.