Ah Denali, the last stop on our road blitz across the final frontier. We rolled in to a national park that we knew was deserted the moment our two-lane highway multiplied into more lanes that were unused, and we started zooming past intersections with black garbage bags taped across traffic lights.
Like a bear freshly out of hibernation, it was 2.30pm and we were hungry even though we had done no exertion all day sitting in the comfort of our overpacked car. Slowly, the architecture gave way from "Alaskan improvisory botch job" to "glamorous glass-walled resort cabins", but for all the sudden agglomerating of infrastructure, there was no one around. (We also found out later that a lot of the resorts we passed were owned unsurprisingly by cruise ship companies, who had special train services for taking their passengers from the coast straight to the park.) We pulled up to a bank of shops only to see their windows boarded up with signs like "Open", "Closed For the Winter" (even though it was May), and "Don't Open, Dead Inside".

There was actually one shop in that whole little tourist town that was opened; it sold souvenirs. We walked in and immediately asked the clerk where he knew we could get food. He said the town of Healy ten minutes away had a supermarket, and before we left, he asked us if we wanted to buy anything. Dylan, Ryan, and I looked at each and shook our heads. When we drove off, we saw the clerk flipping the sign on the front door and shutting shop, at 2 in the afternoon.

After getting to the supermarket and having a nice healthy meal of Sour Patch Kids and M&Ms, we made our way to the park, which normally doesn't let private vehicles in past the first few miles (normally you have to catch a park shuttle into the heart of the land), but due to the circumstances, we were allowed to take the car all the way in to the 30 mile mark. Pretty awesome!

There were very very few other cars who were there, which I am grateful for. I can only remember my time being back in Jiuzhaigou in China, whose remarkable natural beauty was spoiled by the congestion and overcrowding that is inevitable with such well-marketed creations of splendour. What we did see instead were signs warning of recent bear sightings, and later on we would be told by a local visitor that the park put up the signs after a bear ran after a car, and a few days later a separate guy on his motorcycle got jumped in the same area. I had to check my Google Maps to make sure that I had arrived in Denali, and not the wildlife version of South Side Chicago.

I will say it: Denali is one of the best National Parks I have yet visited. All around you are panoramas of mountains in the distance, and you actually can't even see the eponymous mountain itself because it is so goddamn big that most of the time it is covered by clouds. There was something magical in the way the geography was set out: the road curved around this expansive plain that had a wide river running through it, but ringed around this flat valley were snow-dusted mountains everywhere. My phone camera really doesn't do it justice, so I've included some links (here and here) that do a better job of showing the unique landscape. In fact, it reminded me of this one map on Halo called Valhalla (can't believe it's been that many years since I last played it).

Sort of a resemblance

 

Testing the ice, seeing if we can learn to trust and to love once again.

 

Cool mixing of river waters

But the elusive bear was the last tick needed on our wildlife sighting bingo. It had somehow become a thing throughout the course of the trip that we had to see a bear. It didn't matter if it was grizzly, kodiak, brown, black, polar, or panda. The only reason we had spent so much time and money on Airbnbs was to snap a picture of a bear in post-hibernation hunger action. And the sign posted on the park road only made our inner Attenboroughs ever more so attentive.

But to no fortune that day. Instead, it seemed like it was caribou power hour, and they infested all the meadows with their gangly legs and velvet-lined antlers. When we pulled over to take some photos of them, they informed us that this time of the day was reserved for deer, as per the Denali Power Sharing Accord of 1969. Okay then. So like a dog with its tail between its legs, we slunked back to our quirky cigarette-smelling Airbnb (I think it was the only Airbnb we found) that was located in some random airfield.

Silly undomesticated reindeer

Our strangely endearing Airbnb in the middle of an airfield

But the next day we were ready. We used bear spray as deodorant and practised our best bear mating calls in front of the bathroom mirror, and brushed up on our bear pick-up lines like "How about you spend next hibernation with me? ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)". Sadly I never got around to learning bear dance moves, although they seem to like grinding against trunks ...  

And our patience was rewarded! We had been rolling along when we saw two cars parked by the road side. "Mama bear and her cubs," an old man with a white mullet and a hook hand grunted to us when we slowed down. Sensing the opportunity we hopped out of the car, and lo and behold, out near the river, were two grizzly bears frolicking on the ice!

We spent a good hour just by the roadside tracking them in their post-hibernation glory, just lolling around like fat, hairy oafs. These silly animals couldn't even be bothered hunting the easy caribou prey that were just munching on the ice. The bears went up to them, bade them good day, and then continued their playtime. If I was more of a sceptic, I would definitely suspect that they may have been a couple of bored park rangers who decided to put on a show for the few visitors that day.

Caribou just waiting to be eaten

This is how grizzlies evolve to becoming polar

Eventually, the bears started moving closer to the road. We hopped back in our car and tried to track them without crashing and becoming another piece of scrap car on an Alaskan road. Then the bears started lumbering up the hill to where there was a ute parked and a man taking photos outside it. It was our old friend Hook Hand, and he did not care at all that two grizzly bears had just passed him only a handful of metres away. At this point too, we were only about 50 m away from the bear, and we were starting to retreat and regretting that we had left our only can of bear spray in the car behind us. Luckily, the bears ignored us all, and kept going about their bear business. Everyone lived to tell the tale. 

We later caught up with Hook Hand for some hiking advice, who turned out was quite good with using his hook to take photos on his DSLR. However, it was a bit sketchy to hear from him post factum that the two bears were actually juvenile, and thus were more likely to be aggressive and less likely to back down from loud human sounds. Also, their mama was somewhere behind us the entire time we were trying to keep tabs on them (we forgot about her in our excitement). And lastly, he enjoyed Australia when he got to visit there on his R&R when he was in Vietnam ("I could've gone to Hong Kong, but I didn't want to sleep with the chinks I was shootin'!")

Bears on parade

Ryan gauging the distance between him and the car

Silly creatures

And so endeth our trippeth to the Denali. It was an enjoyable trip made more so since Covid had decimated the tourism industry, so thank you Obama for that. I'm glad that I opted to do the trip as a last minute tagalong after my three weeks at work finished. I certainly didn't know what treasures Alaska had to offer, and the company was as much a highlight as the nature, the discarded vehicles on the highway, and the deluxe pizza. More trips around the state are definitely warranted in the near future, with more glaciers and hot springs and wildlife that a city boy from Australia could only dream of experiencing, and doing it in the company of people who share a similar passion for adventure. I finish now with a quote from Christopher McCandless's diary, that reminds me to always grasp at the offer of a trip, because after all, happiness is only real when shared.

An Asian Christopher McCandless