Yesterday, at the recommendation of the RV park, I made reservations for our Denali Bus Tour. Because you can only drive 15 miles into the park in your own car, buses are the only way other than biking or hiking to get to the interior of the park. We chose the shortest 52 miles Toklat tour. It was only $31 per person and takes about 6 hours round trip. You travel from an alpine ecosystem to an arctic tundra ecosystem. We seriously debated about the next longer 68 mile Eileson Visitor center tour but the extra 1-2 hours sounded like a long time and Maverick was staying the in coach. The RV park offers two dog-walks for $15 which was a GREAT deal for us and let us take this tour worry-free. They walked Maverick at 11am and at 2pm. Our bus tour departed at 9:30am and we got back around 4pm. There are two types of tours, ours was “unguided” and the other is guided. The difference is that our tour relies on the bus drive as the tour guide and the other bus has a dedicated tour guide. The guided tour bus also has a long range camera that will image wildlife on monitors inside the bus so you don’t rely on binoculars or telephoto lenses. The guided tour is about $110 per person for the Toklat tour. Be sure to take lunch and snacks. The tour is very long and we were ready to get off the bus by the end. The Toklat tour does stop a few times along the way and once for a bathroom break. The turnaround at the end is about 30minutes and you are free to stay longer and take a different bus back. If you are going, be sure to read up on the different tours so you can select one that best meets your personal needs. On our tour we saw about 6 Caribou close enough to see good detail using binoculars and saw some Dahl sheep from a great distance.
After the tour we ran back to the coach to get Maverick. He and the coach seemed no worse for the wear and the dog walker said she loved Maverick and they had a good time. After a resting a bit we headed back to the village and ate at the Prospector. We had a very nice pizza. The Prospector was the ONLY restaurant open in May 5 years ago. The Prospector offers pizza, pasta, and american food.