The big white mountain is Mt. McKinley or Denali.

A caribou shedding.

A moose. Don’t they look like a horse?

This is the view from Poly Chrome meaning many colors.

This is Brooke trying on a pair of antlers at the visitors center.

Scott was ready to hop right on the 6:40 bus Monday morning.  I was a little concerned (what’s new? :-).  We needed to bring a car seat for the kids on the bus.  That meant bringing food, water, backpacks to carry the kids, two car seats, and two kids onto a crowded bus and riding for at least six hours.  Oh and did I mention we all had head colds?  We found another family with kids exactly our kids ages while we were making dinner on Sunday night.  They said that it is definitely a challenge getting onto the bus especially since the open seats are usually scattered and no one wants to move, but it is well worth the trip.

So when we awoke from a very rainy night to a gorgeous sunny day another camping neighbor urged us to go for the mountain.  They road with us all the way to the next visitors center at Eilson.  They didn’t stay around to hike, but they helped encourage us and helped us navigate the bus system which was slightly overwhelming at first especially with all of the extra baggage.  We were experts and helping others by the next trip.

We were very lucky that Brooke found a friend to talk with and read a book with for more than half of the trip out.  Initially she did really well on the hike too.  She was motivated to climb after she saw the family we climbed with in the White Mountains further up the trail.  Once we reached the family she lost steam again until she decided she wanted to be the leader.  That was okay until the five year old in the other family decided he also wanted to be the leader.  The other mother and I were watching our children wrestle each other on a narrow single person path several hundred feet up a steep slope.  If I had the magic genie bottle from I Dream of Genie and the genie’s magic powers, I would have promptly bopped my head and put my cute, but sometimes overly aggressive three year old into the bottle.  Having no bottle and no magic powers I instead said a quick but polite excuse me and ripped by daughter away from the poor shocked five year old.

The potential danger of two falling children over with, I put Brooke down only to have the two go at it again.  I decided to take Brooke further up the path and we continued that way until the top.  I was tired when I started the climb, but the sheer terror of my daughter running up the very steep trail sent me running after her.  After soaking in the incredible mountain air and sights we began our decent. The little boy asked to hold my hand, and of course Brooke had to hold that hand to.  Not so surprisingly she rejected the other non-occupied hand.  Sadly, after Brooke’s not so friendly behavior we parted with our friends and that was the last we talked with them.  We saw them again from a distance before parting on our bus, but neither Scott nor I told Brooke that they were there.  I don’t want to rush Brooke growing up, but the three year old temper tantrums and not sharing stage occasionally put a damper on our travels.  Brooke was crushed that we didn’t see them again.  We just kept trying to review good choices and the choices she made instead.  Maybe it will sink in someday?

Brooke did pretty well on the ride back, but after the last rest stop Brooke had had enough.  She was screaming at the top of her lungs, the entire bus was looking at us, and we were out of distractions and ideas.  Thankfully, the bus driver started telling a story about our campground that caught Brooke’s attention and helped us make it back peacefully.  It turns out that they had to shut down our campground a few years back because camper’s personal items kept disappearing and then reappearing in the middle of the park in random places.  Rangers eventually set up a camera on a picnic table with some items like a hat and shoes.  The camera caught images of animals, but none taking the items.  Until one day they found the camera in the woods.  On the film they saw the culprit taking not only the items, but also trying to eat the camera.  It was a wolf.  They realized a wolf pack was moving into the area and so they closed down our campsite for a while until the pack had moved onto other territory.  The bus driver was very skilled at story telling and I thanked her immensely for saving us from being thrown out the back of the bus.

It was a very long day for two slightly under the weather cuties.  We had boarded a bus at 11:15 and didn’t get back home until 7:15.  Our trip to the visitors center was three hours.  We hiked from 2:50 until 4:30.  It only took thirty minutes to get down, but an hour to get up.

It was a Grand Slam Day for wild life. We saw sheep, moose, caribou, and bear. The temperature was in the mid 70s. The sunrise was at 4:15 and the sunset was at 11:59. We are at 19 hours and 36 minutes of sunlight.