How to Drive Yourself into Denali NP with a Timed Entry Pass

welcome to the summer of 2020 in alaska we just scored a golden ticket allowing us to drive 66 miles to ielts and point and camp inside denali national park normally you can only get to where we're going by riding on a crowded bus for eight hours fortunately in this case 2020 has proven to be anything but normal [Music] we are ben and rebecca of outliers overland a couple of outside the box thinkers who ironically travel inside a box meet denny our trusted four-wheel drive expedition vehicle and he enjoys taking the road less traveled as much as we do join us as we search for off the beaten path destinations and a life less ordinary [Music] well good morning that was an awesome little campsite from i overlander just outside of the park perfect and i can also guarantee that's the last drone footage you're going to be seeing in this video and it's official we are in the denali national park believe it or not ben and i have never been here in the 12 years we've lived in alaska this was too good of an opportunity to pass up the coronavirus situation has really reduced tourism and they opened up a timed entry this is not to be confused with the uh fall road lottery this is special for this year now that fall road lottery we got drawn for that one too it's a good year why is it so special you might be wondering well it's because normally you can only go past mile 15 in the denali national park on a bus they closed the road system to private vehicles many years ago and it's really rare like that fall road lottery that you get to go so this pass is kind of like willy wonka's golden ticket when visiting denali national park you cannot help but appreciate the history and dedication put forth in preserving the natural state of this land denali was established as the 13th u.s national park in 1917 by president woodrow wilson this only came to be after charles sheldon known as the father of denali national park dedicated nearly a decade of his life to lobbying for its creation preservation of wildlife was a driving force for sheldon as gold mining was in full swing when he arrived in 1908 after 10 months of witnessing the devastating rate at which wild game was harvested to feed miners he returned to the east coast to see his dream to reality probably more so than any other national park i visited you become aware of the deliberate efforts to maintain the wilderness of denali this is evident from the conscious decision not to pave the road restricting vehicular travel as well as in the architecture of park structures clearly built to blend into their surroundings these efforts were first instigated by adolf murie a wildlife biologist who lived in the park to study wolves in the 1940s he proved to be a key player in campaigning for the park's expansion from 2 to 6 million acres an act that took place in 1980 at the hand of president jimmy carter above all denali national park demonstrates what can happen when a few people set forth to change the world it's proof that one person can make a difference well so far the general public could get to exactly where we're at now but you need our golden ticket to get past this gate here this is going to be awesome hi there i'm dylan great how are you good are you a permit holder for 8 at 8am yesterday did you go over the safety video we did here's a reminder of the rules of the road thank you do you want any you want a brochure oh yeah that'll be great i love reading this stuff good morning all right can i see your pets please okay then okay can i see an idp have a good time thank you thank you have a good day well this is also the beginning of the dirt road so on our trip we're gonna have roughly 90 miles of dirt road gotta love that i did go ahead and let some air out of the tires on the front and put them at 57 just to soften the ride because we have this dirt road ahead of us and we have another one coming up in the following videos i see hazard lights up ahead maybe that means the bears are out i'm not sure uh the little video we had to watch said hazards are on do not pass but this is not like a stopping point for like a bus stop so they must see something they must we'd never be looking around they're wrong what is it there's a beaver dam over there oh there's something just scattered off into the tundra there i had what ben deemed a brilliant idea to stop at our campground tech lenica on the way into the park so that we could get a good campsite because we have until 6 pm to go out to isleson and check-in starts here in the morning hours like 11am is when you technically can camp but she said we could take any site that's open and this way we'll get maybe a choice site instead of maybe tonight it being full because it is a saturday night on a road lottery weekend rabbit oh my gosh we saw a rabbit a rabbit a hair we're in alaska so their hair and the camera went nuts that's a nice one take it out we'll walk the campsite and make sure it's a good one i don't know it deems a good one other than flat and big enough for the truck maybe some blueberry bushes around here so we could see if they're ripe yet sensitive area picnic table in the fire fire pit so i think we're okay here's our pass with all of our instructions she said we put this on our campsite this campsite is not going to work honey no cell phone service i told you you had to take the weekend off no work so like that sign uh says there are size restrictions if you want to uh participate in this type of an adventure uh keep that in mind when deciding on which vehicle you're gonna drive up at this point i had a few realizations firstly how many people visit denali national park to warrant that many toilets secondly and again just how lucky we are to experience the park sands the thousands of daily visitors who would normally be here thirdly we're about halfway into our journey and it's gone by way too fast it's time to slow down and savor these last 36 miles to ielson point i don't know what it means but there's a smile upon your face and i see something shimmering in your eyes [Music] and they say if you want to glimpse the future you need space and you said you put down your morning gun we've done enough hunting in these parts to know that you have to get out of the vehicle just from the road you're not gonna see wildlife you actually have to stop and we call it glassine hills but still nothing in the way of a big wildlife yet next wildlife spotting i don't know what that thing is but he's cute you might be able to see him there's a brown bear walking into the brush out of that riverbed there's another uh angle at that brown bear it's a long ways off but at least we're able to see some wildlife today look down look look lower oh okay i saw it okay thank you so much no problem have a good day yeah thank you this looks like a good place to park for the night yeah landslide it's pretty with the uh low ceiling i'm really wondering like what are we missing over here on the uh alaska range obviously i know that you know there's four or hunter denali and all kinds of other peaks and glaciers but we've never seen it from uh this perspective but the ceiling is low and statistically you can only see the mountain three out of ten days so it is what it is still great there are a handful of caribou resting out there in the riverbed there's another caribou in this riverbed too yep right there and another caribou up on a hillside at the end of the road for our little golden ticket we've made it to ielson point or isleson visitor center typically you can see the mountain from here and the sky is definitely cleared but not quite all the way up to denali yet so we'll see if we can see it the road goes on for about another 30 miles but it's not covered in the past that we have today [Music] hmm [Music] food [Music] hmm [Music] well that's a wrap for the ielts and visitor center the actual center was closed do the whole covid thing but that's to be expected in 2020. oh there's a caribou just cruising right down there well there are animals everywhere it's almost as if we're in a park uh we're gonna head to our campground now it's gonna be kind of nice only doing uh 30 miles and then pulling in for the night so far it's been a pretty good day [Music] take me far away before my mind spins off and i am all derailed derailed [Music] just [Music] [Music] again [Music] step site well this day is a wrap now it's time to share how we scored passes for this unique experience firstly you're gonna have to visit the website recreation.gov and create an account if you do not have one already now in the search field type in denali a few choices will populate but you're looking for denali road lottery and denali timed entry these are your two choices for do-it-yourself adventures within the park touching real quick on the road lottery the application period is in june and the annual road lottery takes place at the end of their tourist season which is usually in late september and if you do win a ticket this gives you plenty of time to plan a trip the denali timed entry passes are special for the summer of 2020 and you will have two choices eielson or teklanica ielsen is where we visited in this video teklenica is where we're actually camped at this time in the video but just take our word for it you're going to want to get the ielsen permit things really do get good after this campground i often refer to the reservation system as a game and now is when you have to start playing the timed entry passes are on fridays saturdays and sundays throughout the summer and on the website they release these passes in two batches the first batch is two weeks before the drive in entry date and the second batch is two days before the drive-in entry date what it boils down to is you can take a last-minute trip or plan something two weeks in advance but essentially almost every single day at 10 o'clock alaska time tickets for something are released rebecca and i doubled the odds of our success by both being logged into recreation.gov under our own personal accounts upon securing our timed entry pass we then moved over to the reserve denali website and searched out the tech lenica campground which happens to be the furthest point you can camp in the park with your rv now there are a couple caveats the campground requires a three night minimum stay and that also gives you flexibility on three different directions to make your timed entry pass and your campground reservation work the second caveat is that your vehicle cannot leave the campsite that excludes your timed entry pass your vehicle goes into the site when you arrive your vehicle then goes out of the site when you leave now keep in mind the campground does have a bus stop so you have the ability of jumping on the bus and going exploring from the campground well i hope this little segment helps you take advantage of the rare and unique opportunity that is present in denali national park during the summer of 2020. [Music] it's a beautiful sunny day here in teclinica campground everybody's out recreating enjoying the sunshine it's a busy place today good fresh wilderness air off-grid always a little hard to disconnect from the telephones for the first day out yeah it's good for you my one chore was to uh check the daily footage from yesterday to make sure there were no uh specs on the sensor and we made it an awesome trip without a spec on the sensor that's absolutely a lot of fun to watch what we collected yesterday all right thank you so much for joining us on this adventure there are more uh adventures in alaska in the summer of 2020 coming at you so hit that subscribe button and we will see you on the road

Channel: Outliers Overland

Views: 21,666

Rating: 4.9102716 out of 5

Keywords: denali national park, timed entry, truck camping, alaska life, alaska lifestyle, eielson point, overlanding, denali national park alaska, denali national park camping, expedition vehicle 4x4, national parks adventure, overlanding alaska, alaska camping, denali road permit, denali road alaska, mitsubishi fuso 4x4 expedition vehicle, denali national park road lottery, denali national park bus tour, rv life, overlanding truck, national parks, rv living

Id: a_L4FMgoSB4

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020