After leaving Fairbanks, we returned to Denali National Park and the next day we took a 7-hour "school bus" ride 60 miles into the interior of the park. While our tour was in mid-afternoon, we still spotted Dall sheep, bear, and caribou. You could also see a lot of "Indian" snow in the distance ('Apache' here, and 'Apache' there, etc.)

We were scheduled to ride the McKinley Explorer rail from Denali back to Anchorage. Unfortunately, the day before a freight train carrying a crane was too tall and destroyed the entrance to one of the tunnels that the railroad passes through, shutting down all rail traffic in both directions. We were fortunate to still have our motor coach to take us back to Anchorage, while literally over a thousand tourists were stranded in Denali until buses could be brought in from Anchorage (6 hours away). Barbara and I were very disappointed that our travel companions missed this adventure as we had been on the rail in 1996 and thoroughly enjoyed the ride and scenery. The next day we stopped at the Alaska Wild Berry store on our way to Seward to board our ship.