On the Denali FB Page, I had already seen pictures of lots of wildlife and the snow that people were encountering on the two previous Road Lottery days, so I was really stoked this morning!!!
Both couples had come to the park the previous eveni
ng; the Rutters were camping right outside the park in another place and the Filardis slept in the back of their covered truck at my camp site. We were all up at the crack of dawn and ready to pull out around 7 AM. The sun was just starting to come up.
We had a cooler of drinks and food/snacks in the back. Everyone was loaded with cameras and dressed warmly. It was in the 30s. Before we knew it, we got to the Savage River where the ranger checked our permit.
Soon after, we spotted our first moose off to the left laying down in the grass. However he was too far away for my camera to capture him, so here’s a pic borrowed from the internet. 
It wasn’t quite that green. Most of the vegetation was brown. Further down the road was snow….. I’m going to just let the pictures speak for themselves. We saw bears, moose, caribou, arctic squirrels, ptarmigans, and even a wolverine, although he was too fast to get a picture, streaking across the road right in front of Eric’s vehicle. We saw a friend of the Filardi’s who works for DNP, Ranger Bill at the site of a bear jam! We went all the way to Wonder Lake and Kantishna, where Mt. McKinley, or otherwise known as Denali, was out in all her glory for us! We saw bears, moose, caribou, arctic squirrels, ptarmigans, Dall sheep, and even a wolverine. The wolverine streaked across the road in front of us so fast we didn’t get any photos, but we could see him scurrying down the valley below, crossing the stream, and then going up the other side of the valley through the brush. On my previous trip in Denali 3 weeks before with my son, the bus driver had mentioned that this year was the first time wolverines had been seen in the park in years, and the area where we saw it was just about where the bus driver said the wolverine had been hanging out.
We arrived back at the Riley campground at the entrance at about 7 pm, tired and hungry! I went to bed shortly after eating, cause I knew I was pulling out the next morning bright and early to head HOME