Tuesday, June 23: Day 11

So I found out today on a bus tour in Denali Nat'l Park that bears with blonde fur exist. They're in the family of brown bears, but with really light fur:

A bus tour is the only way to get a significant distance into the park. The park itself is about 6 million acres and if you explored 1,000 acres a day it would take 17 years to see the whole thing. Another way to think of it is that 6 Yellowstone Nat'l Parks would fit inside Denali Nat'l Park. So it's a big place. Alaska is home to 7 of the 10 largest national parks in the country. See for yourself:

1. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 13,175,901 acres
2. Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 8,472,506 acres
3. Adirondack Park, New York - 6,100,000 acres
4. Denali National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 6,075,030 acres
5. Katmai National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 4,093,229 acres
6. Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 4,030,025 acres
7. Death Valley National Park, California & Nevada - 3,372,402 acres
8. Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, Alaska - 3,283,246 acres
9. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana & Idaho - 2,219,791 acres
10. Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska - 1,750,717 acres

In total we saw 7 bears, probably about 2-3 dozen caribou, a red fox, a million snowshoe hare, and a billion+ squirrels. There were some German tourists on our bus that really enjoyed the squirrels. They wanted the bus driver to stop every time a squirrel was on the side of the road.
FYI caribou and reindeer are the same animal. The only difference is that caribou are wild, and reindeer are tamed.