Denali's Majestic Wilderness - Alaska

Completely overrated for what it is. It's Northern Minnesota with mountains. I don't get the fascination unless of course you are city folks. The park has terrible wildlife viewing and of the 70 some miles of road in the park you can drive 15 of that unless you hop on a bus. Literally one road in, one road out. For those of us who don't enjoy hiking, save your money. The surrounding area is awful with minimal parking and over priced stores, restaurants and attractions. One last thing is it appears to me to be run and managed by a bunch of hippies. It's nice the park is preserved, BUT, you are a little over the top when it comes keeping it all natural. It's my tax money, my park, i should be able to explore more freely.

Great destination! Enjoyed the open trail and peaceful outdoor atmosphere.

Great destination! Enjoyed the open trail and peaceful outdoor atmosphere.

Beautiful landscape with breathtaking vistas. If you want to see wildlife, you may want to do a good bit of hiking, which is almost all off trail, so you should be experienced navigating in that kind of environment. Otherwise, you can take one of the park buses and see how lucky you are.

We visited Denali Park on June 21 with Denali Tundra Wilderness Tour. The tour is 5.5h long and it goes to mile 43. Our bus was full and our guide was good and knowledgeable, however there isn’t much to see in the park from the road. If you are hiking the chances of seeing wildlife from close up are much higher, but the park bear is grizzly so in my mind only experienced hikers should brave it out. If you are on the buss tour you are guaranteed to see Dall’s sheep because they are white and easy to spot. However they are so high up the mountain that they look like white stones and only good binoculars and the buss camera would allow you to see what they are. We were lucky enough to spot one caribou for very short time, one bear with two cubs that was also very very far away, and one moose, again very far away and also for very short time. The only animal we saw from close up was a squirrel and two of the wild chickens. The tour guide said that from 20+ days of tours seeing bears was his 6th time so we were lucky to have see it. Hence spotting wildlife from the road is pure luck and too far away to really enjoy it. Even if you go on the park hop-on busses there isn’t much to see from the road. Hence my overall opinion that this park is very overrated.