AP Features, October 15th, 2007
You'd think it would be pretty boring for a kid to sit on a bus for six hours looking out the window.
But when the bus is going through Denali National Park in Alaska, and there's a possibility of spotting wildlife, boredom is replaced by anticipation.
Our family of four were just about the only folks on our tour under the age of 60. We'd somehow ended up with seats on a bus with a group of mostly seniors from a cruise ship. I prayed that my kids wouldn't do anything embarrassing or make too much noise. My husband sat with one of our boys and I sat with the other, the better to control them if need be.
Fortunately the wildlife spotting started pretty much right away. Though they were far away, we saw the silhouettes of Dahl sheep on a ridge. A few hours later there was a grizzly bear feeding his way through a landscape of berry bushes. And after that, a moose with an incredible rack of antlers not far from the bus window.
In the days before our bus trip, we'd seen whales and eagles and even puppies in training to be sled dogs for the Iditarod. I'd worried that the bus trip might not rate.
But the mystery and magic of Denali - despite the view through a streaked and glarey bus window - proved captivating, even for a couple of fidgety boys who didn't like the box lunch we were handed as we boarded.
The next day we'd been planning to drive back to Anchorage and go on a hike. But we decided to spend a few more hours in Denali to see if we could spot anything else. Buses can go deep into the park, but private cars are only allowed for a few miles on the park road near the entrance, so we knew we wouldn't have too many opportunities to look for wildlife, but we decided it was worth a shot.
Lo and behold an owl appeared in a treetop. We pulled over by the side of the road and rolled our windows down. My older son took out a camera and snapped a few shots of the bird. All of a sudden, it spread its wings and swooped toward us. In a hurry he rolled the window up and we all collapsed with laughter as the owl dive-bombed our car and then flew back up to the trees as if to say, "How dare you take my picture!"
We'd had whales swim under our tour boat a few days earlier, and bears not far away during a walk with a Native guide near the town of Hoonah. But it was the story of what we jokingly referred to as "the attack of the killer owl" that we told most often when we got back.
Riding the subway seems awfully tame compared to braving the wilds of the 49th state.
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On the Net:
Denali National Park: http://www.nps.gov/dena/
