So on the 4th of July a bunch of my family and friends went to Denali National Park.  On the 4th we all went white water rafting.  That was so much fun.  We had amazing weather.  I don't have pictures of that yet but i will soon.  This first picture is from the next day when Riana, Sean, Nolita (riana's friend from MN), Shirley and Jessica and I took an 11 hour bus trip into the park.  The park is a little different than most parks.  there is only 1 road and only the park busses can go into the park.  They have a really cool system though.  so if you want to go hiking or backpacking you buy a bus ticket and you can take any green bus that might pass you.  so we were constantly picking up and dropping off hikers and backpackers.  you can drive in only if you have a special permit to get to one of several camp grounds in the park.  But you are only allowed to drive in once and out once so you can just drive around the park.  There main mission for the park is to keep the park untouched by humans.  The park is like 6 million acres big.  it is amazingly beautiful.  we had a really exceptional trip.  Denali, the mountain behind me is usually covered by clouds and it's rare to have it as clear as it is.  maybe 5-10 days a summer you can see it this well.  It was so cool.  

Our bus trip was 86 miles into the park up to Wonder Lake.  The water was surprisingly warm considering where it was and i would have definatley jumped in if i'd had my suit.  Along the way we found a really cool place to go backpacking.  we are going to do that sometime this summer soon.  I am excited about that.  Although 11 hours seemed way too long it was really cool to be able to see the mountain and we saw 3 bears and cubs and moose , a fox, some caribou and some cool birds.  riana said that the wildlife we saw was lame compared to past trips she's taken but it was still cool.  i wish i'd had binoculars though.  that would have been smart.  Definately go to Denali National Park if you have a chance in your life to do that.  Make sure you plans some hikes and such.  We could have gotten off our bus along the way and hiked and hung out for a while and then we could have just jumped onto another bus but we were all really tired from all the stuff we had been doing over the past 2 weeks.