Day-by-day look at Alaska

Some of the lodges had people demonstrating lifestyles from the old days of living in the bush. Many Alaskan natives still pursue a subsistence lifestyle, living in tiny villages not serviced by roads.

However, modern clothing, weapons, housing and other accouterments have replaced a lot of the old traditional ways.

We continued on to Denali, rain and shine. Amazingly, the clouds lifted for us just as we arrived at a viewpoint for Denali, also known as Mt. McKinley. We got to see the top of the peak, although the base remained in low clouds.

The Denali Princess Lodge was sumptuous, with hanging baskets and tubs of flowers everywhere. The lodge was located high on the banks of the Nenana River. Our room had a view of the spruce forest with scattered birches or aspen. We saw red squirrels dashing about, but few birds. The absence of birds other than bald eagles, magpies and ravens was par for this trip, except for our boat cruise. We had to work really hard to get the birds that we saw.

We had dinner at the Summit Restaurant at the Denali Princess. Vic had a Caesar salad and I had salmon. Our huge dessert of hot blueberry bread pudding with butter-rum sauce and blueberry compote was to die for.

Day 7 — Denali National Park

The day started out cold and rainy, but ended up partly cloudy with sun shining through on occasion. We took a 7 a.m. bus tour into Denali National Park, bringing our own lunch, snacks and water, because there is no food or water in the park.

Where to start? How about with willow ptarmigan on the roadside? That was a life species for us both.

Ptarmigan go to the roadsides to pick up gravel and are fairly easy to spot there. We’re not sure why they bother to visit the roadsides. Alaska is loaded with gravel.

We saw snowshoe hares, arctic ground squirrels, red squirrels, a sow grizzly with three cubs, a huge male grizzly and a couple of small herds of caribou, including a couple of single males with huge racks. The best sight may have been a black wolf loping along in the brush by the road. A pack of five adults and seven pups has a den near the road. Some of them are spotted about one visit out of 10. We also saw over 20 Dall sheep in the distance on the mountains, a pair of golden eagles, a pair of merlins, a kestrel and a Northern harrier. It was a good day for raptors.