Arrive at the Denali National Park Wilderness Center early morning, board the 7:00 AM camper bus into Teklanika campground, where we will spend a night before heading further into the park.
Our first view of 'The High One' on the park road, just after clearing Primrose Ridge...she is in glorious morning alpenglow, the valley aflame in color...wispy fog hangs just above the river basin. 
A hike along the Teklanika River in warm afternoon sunshine,... a wide, flat, gravelly water course.....Braided streams wander back and forth across it's width. Spotting tracks of moose, wolf, and grizzly bear. The tips of snow-covered peaks in the Alaska range are just visible at the head of the valley southwest. 
We rise before light next morning - a heavy layer of frost covers the tent fly sheet. Catch the first camper bus headed to Wonder Lake....cross the Toklat River, a stop at Polychrome Overlook, and the Eliason Visitors Cnter, with it's incredible view of the east face of Denali, the mountain rearing up higher and higher as we approach from the northeast along the park road. 
The High One is out in all her glory when we arrive at Wonder Lake in early afternoon... solitary, dwarfing the other peaks in the massif; Knife-edged ridge lines seperate the expanses of gleaming white snowfields in full sun from the southeastern face, hidden now in shadows of dusky purple; The Wickersham Wall rising near-vertical from her midsection. She decides to turn in early this evening. She pulls her cloak of silvery grey clouds around her, and she is gone. 
The core of the Alaska Range on display from our pitch; the campground nestled in a natural ampitheater, which eases down to the wide plain of the McKinley River basin. Willow, alder, aspen showing peak fall color now; a carpet of blueberry bushes paint the slope down to the river a vibrant red, mixing with yellows of willow and the deep green of the occasional spruce...Migrating Sand Hill Cranes in huge v-formations pass overhead day and night...the sound of their honking fills the air, seeming to come from everywhere* 
McKinley Bar Trail - From the trailhead a half of a mile back on the Park road, the trail descends gently through a wide gap, through low brush, scattered stands of aspen and black spruce, then drops into marshy boglands, kettle ponds, moss, then through a dense spruce forest. Here, we stop to graze on blueberries, eating our fill trailside; making hardly any progress, we forget all about our hike; Jeanne cooing and "mmm"ing as she shovels the sugar-sweet berries into her mouth....sounds very like a foraging animal. Had a bear appeared while we were gorging ourselves, heads down in the bushes as we were, I imagine he would have simply joined in the feasting right alongside us, without either of us even noticing. A ways up the trail, we pass a particularily prolific stand of blueberry bushes; Jeanne comments:"I'm saving those for the way back!"...
We're on the first Camper bus out at 6:00 AM next morning, a new record for breaking camp: 40 minutes! We pass a bull moose and 3 cows grazing in a kettle pond; A Dall sheep, a big ram, lying on a bluff above the road, looking bored with it all; On one slope a large herd of Dall sheep graze, and just a few hundred yards below, a brown bear sow and her two cubs forage; A lone wolf trots along a ridge parallel to the park road. Our driver pulls over, stops the engine, and we sit quietly. The wolf stops, sits down. The driver whispers "Shhh! Listen."...Through the window there comes the very faint sound, a mournful howl, starting high, then falling slowly. The wolf sits on the hillside, head tilted back, singing his lonely song...but for whom? 
* Of the Sand Hill Cranes, Walter R. Borneman writes in his book "Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land":
"I'm alone somewhere between Wonder Lake and the moraines of the Muldrow Glacier. The silence is deafening. So this is what Robert Service meant when he wrote of 'the silence that bludgeons you dumb'. It is so very still. Then something stirs a few decibels. At first, it is only a faint buzz. Then the buzz starts to pulsate until it grows louder and turns into an unmistakable, if somewhat monotonous, rhythm. Honk-honk-honk-honk-honk ad infinitum.
Where is it coming from? Finally, looking far to the north, I see faint, thin lines coming toward me high in the sky. The sound crescendos, and the lines become long Vs of many dots. Suddenly, I understand. Sandhills. Sandhill cranes beating their way south above autumn's reddish tint. Once the giant formation is above me, it is the sound, not the silence, that is deafening. Then, as slowly as they came, the hundreds of wings disappear to the south. Once again, there is nothing but silence.
Scale. That's what this land is all about.
May it always be so."
From the book "Alaska Saga of a Bold Land" by Walter R. Borneman
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