IS IT WORTH IT? Denali Bus Tour // Denali National Park

[Music] good morning happy travelers greetings from just outside denali national park we stayed in this awesome tiny home last night and today we are taking a bus tour into the interior of denali and i'm so excited i better see some bears staying about 15 minutes south of the park entrance hopefully we have time to stop and get a little bit more coffee because i'm not nearly caffeinated enough and it's gonna be an eight hour bus ride but we're in it for the long haul today but it's gonna be amazing i'm excited this morning we're taking the tundra wilderness tour they have both narrated and non-narrated buses that go into the park the non-narrated buses are transit buses so they're taking people to the lodges in the park backpackers campers but you can still ride it in and check out the scenery but the narrated tours are quite a bit more expensive but it's more like a tour unfortunately the transit buses were full or else we'd take those and save a little bit of money but luckily we got a spot on this bus right here in the bus depot they have a coffee shop so we're able to get some coffee before the bus tour very important very very important so as i said you're only allowed to drive your private vehicle 15 miles into the park beyond that you need to take one of the park buses which you have to pay for this keeps crowds down and keeps the area wild the only way you can take your car all the way in is in may they hold a lottery for a certain amount of time in september so if you're one of those lucky few good for you otherwise you got to take a bus we've heard that those spots fill up within hours thousands of applicants for only a few hundred tickets i think that would be cool but we're happy to take the bus today [Music] we just got the spiel from our driver he sounds awesome so i think it's going to be a really fun tour i had heard this before but there's been a landslide in the park so we can't go all the way in so unfortunately they have to knock off about 20 miles [Music] we've just spotted our first wildlife few male moose off of this side of the bus and this is what it looks like on the bus [Music] taking pictures this is the end of august and it's the beginning of the moose rut which is the moose mating season and they get pretty aggressive and they will fight with each other and they will fight with you if you come across them so you have to be real careful we've made it past the paved part of the park we're on the dirt road and i guess the weather's been pretty bad over the last few weeks and they got some snow a few days ago so there is snow on the ground luckily there is no precipitation today although it is cloudy and we cannot see denali keeping our eyes peeled for wildlife [Music] after about an hour and a half on the bus we have stopped at our first rest area i think we get one more stop after this this is a good rest area there's lots of toilets a little viewpoint some information so far we've really enjoyed the tour the bus driver is very informative he tells us a lot of facts some things that we didn't know like this park actually doesn't have any hiking trails this one of the only national parks that you can just walk wherever you want normally national parks kind of make sure that you stay on the trails everywhere they do that because they figure the impact would be less if you just wander wherever you want instead of making hard hiking trails so that's kind of neat to get little bits of information like that so the bus driver has a camera that he can zoom in pretty far with so if you see any wildlife he takes the camera and zooms it way in and there are little screens inside the bus that you can see very close up in case you don't have binoculars or a very good camera i think summer is officially over here in denali even though it is not even quite september yet there is snow on the ground man it is cold it's got to be i'd say in the 40s i'm not just saying that because i'm a californian it is actually cold [Music] [Music] the bear was just walking down the side of the road and then saw something and took off after it started running a little bit before it dipped off around the edge [Music] yeah we're definitely lucky we saw that and now we're a bit higher up and i cannot believe how much snow there is on the ground i was not prepared for this winter wonderland in august [Music] a lot of more bears they're really far away though pro tip bring binoculars to denali good ones we made it to our turnaround point we're at mile 42 right now unfortunately like we said there was a landslide a couple miles from here otherwise we would go to what did he say miles 63 yeah 63. we're missing out on about 20 miles but they prorate the amount that you pay if something like that happens so we didn't pay the full amount that we would have if we would have gone all the way as far as they go which isn't to the end of the road this tour doesn't go all the way to the end but still goes pretty far [Music] on the drive back we saw some caribou off on a very far ridge we also saw some prairie dogs and we made it back to the rest stop that we stopped at earlier normally there would be some other spots down the road that we would stop because of the landslide we turned around a little earlier today we didn't get a view of denali mountain today which was unfortunate but yesterday's views were incredible so we're really thankful that we got to experience that about an hour after our last rest stop we have made it back to the bus depot it's about a five hour tour normally the tour takes seven to eight hours but because of that landslide we turned around a little earlier which kind of stinks but we're actually happy to have the extra time to do a couple other things it's a little bit of a pricey tour as we said because we couldn't go as far out the landslide they prorated it so it's a little bit less expensive than normal normally it's like 160 something dollars a person anything involving tourism in alaska is pretty pricey it is not a fantastic budget destination you can also take the green bus which is 60 per person what the green bus is is it's essentially a transit bus so it'll take the backpackers campers hikers into the park to the campgrounds and the lodges and different things like that so it's not narrated um there's no tour guide and they are hop on hop off i believe so whenever they stop you can get off and then get on another bus that'll come by which can be an advantage but it also could be a disadvantage you get a little bit more freedom to do some hikes but you don't really know when the next bus is going to come and if that bus is full then you have to wait for the next one so that's a little bit of a gamble but you can still get a relatively similar experience for a lot less money if you don't care about the whole tour guide aspect that being said we really did enjoy the whole tour guide experience of this nicer bus the more expensive buses are a little bit nicer too not a ton they're still kind of drafty school buses but they're a little bit more comfortable i actually went on a transit bus the last time i was in denali and it was just like a school bus with the really uncomfortable seats and it was very drafty and cold this one had those screens like we said earlier so when the guy does see some wildlife you can get a close-up view they also give you a little gift bag on this tour which is kind of nice it's a little denali national park tote bag with some snacks yeah there's pop chips a cookie and two granola bars yeah and they had water on there too so you get a little bit more for your money i don't know if it's a hundred dollars worth per person more for your money but since it was a little bit cheaper uh because of the landslide i think it was worth it for us and also the transit buses were sold out so that's why we ended up doing this one yeah even though we're kind of hitting the end of the summer there was barely any availability so make sure you book well in advance all in all though we had a great experience and i think we're both happy we did it it's just beautiful and that's the only way you can get into the park so you know if you want to see denali definitely gotta take a bus gotta take a bus if you don't feel like taking any bus into denali national park you still have a little bit of an option the first 15 miles of the denali park road is open to private vehicles so you can drive a little bit into the park and still have a chance to see some moose and bears if you like you do still have to pay the park entrance fee which i believe is 15 per person you have to stop at the visitor center or the bus depot to buy that and display it in your windshield there is no ranger stop as you enter into the park so it's kind of like on an honor system but if they catch you without it you will get a fine in this part of the park there are a few designated hiking trails unlike in the interior where you can just wander all over the place there are a couple scenic lookouts in case the mountain is visible on that day that you're there and yeah if you just don't want to pay a hundred plus dollars or whatever spend eight hours on a bus you can just explore a little bit on your own one really interesting thing that we learned on that tour is that in the winter months there are no motorized vehicles allowed within the park and that includes all of the park service vehicles too so they actually get around the park via dog sled we have come to the dog kennels where they keep all the dogs for dog sledding i heard more animals and i said we have to do it they are official denali national park blood dogs that's the most alaskan thing i've ever heard in my life let's go see them okay we made it to the dog kennels there are coveted rolls of course but you're allowed to pet the dogs if you can reach them but not like a free-for-all and some of them are laying on their kennels and they're super cute and i love them already [Music] hello [Music] i'm ben is my dog he doesn't care about me at all in my mind i was in a room with like 20 dogs and they were all like jumping over me and licking me and i was holding puppies and stuff this is so cool but this is more reality this is not exactly what i had in my in my mind [Music] they have some three week old puppies over here oh my god [Music] oh my god i can't they're so cute freaking out [Music] we drove back into the park in hopes of seeing just a little more wildlife the moose are running right now so they're very active especially around this time of day fingers crossed we'll see a few more but it's only two pairs of eyes and one of them is driving it's a little more difficult to spot wildlife we thought we saw something but i think it was a tree or a bush okay i was eating pizza that's all that we saw some guy eating pizza wildlife like kelly said we can't really drive that far but it's still really nice to kind of explore at your own pace too we'll go a little bit and if we don't find anything then we'll just head to town and get some food we got a wildlife jam not 100 sure we're allowed to pull over here you want to go check it out yep came across a wildlife jam and turns out there are about four moose cows back in the brush that's pretty cool they were relatively close but far enough away to where it was a good enough distance and unlike yellowstone everyone was actually keeping their distance [Music] they're just launching away pretty cool well we're definitely happy that we went back into the park that was really awesome you know they say animals are more active around dusk time and i've always found that to be true we're like oh let's just do it on the way to dinner take an extra half hour or so so got to see more animals which is always a good thing we're gonna end this video here i'm gonna go have some dinner but we have a lot of alaskan adventures to come so don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss those this is kelly and kevin from the aqua tourists peace out [Music] your crazy spot [Music] how's this good this is good so we're missing out on about you can read your books now or you can read it i don't know wherever you're staying in the hotels the bus driver will film it and it displays on these little cameras that and it's a play and it displays on these little screens that is inside the bus so you can if you can't actually see it with your own eyes you can see it on the little screen say that again about an hour after our last rest stop we have made it back to the train not train depot this is a bus [Music] you

Channel: The Awkward Tourists

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Keywords: mt mckinley, denali national park alaska, denali national park tour, camping at denali, how the bus works at denali, is denali national park worth it, alaska vacation travel video guide, national parks in alaska to visit, denali national park and preserve, tundra wilderness tour, denali, danali, denali national park, denali bus, alaska 2021, alaska vlog, visiting denali, is denali worth it, must see alaska, best alaska, top alaska sights, must do alaska, mount mckinley

Id: y90jmoeNTew

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021