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After Fairbanks, we headed south to Denali National Park. We spent our first day just hanging out and cooking dinner, but on the second day, we took a bus into the heart of the park and bush-whacked our way through the tundra to get a glimpse of some mountains. On our way back to the road, we spotted a busload of tourists watching some grizzly bears through our binoculars, and we swung our path to the right to keep a safe distance from the bears. Thirty minutes later, however, as we were nearing the road, we found the three grizzlies standing between us and our destination. Up to this point, only one of our bear sightings was a grizzly, and all of the sightings were from a safe distance inside a car or a viewing platform. Finding ourselves trespassing through a bear's territory on foot was not a comforting discovery -- we were in the middle of nowhere, 50 miles from camp, and the weather was beginning to change from rain to snow.

The last shuttle back to camp would be going down this road in about ten minutes, and we didn't have time to wait for the bears to pass. Sprinting to the right we moved towards safety, but in a few minutes we found our path blocked by a large herd of caribou. Out of options, we turned to the side again and dashed up a path between the two groups of wild animals. This put the bears, who move much faster than human beings, on a comfortable downhill slope, while we, with our backpacks and hiking gear, fought our way up a really steep, slippery, brush-covered hill.

Obviously, we escaped the bear encounter without being eaten, but we were pretty freaked out.It was a relief to get to the road and catch that last shuttle bus, and to put our soaking-wet socks and shoes by the heater.