On Saturday, Andrew, a colleague of Aili's from England, joined us for a trip to Denali National Park. As coincidence would have it, his colleague, Catherine, also from England, is doing some research at University of Alaska - Fairbanks. She met us at the park entrance and we promptly drove in and set up camp at the Savage River Campground. We strolled down to the river and watched a lynx stalk snowshoe hares through the underbrush before scaring him off. The next day we boarded a bus for a ride deep into the park (not accessible by private vehicles). It's basically just a school bus shuttle, but the driver provided interesting facts about the park and the local flora and fauna. We saw Dall Sheep climbing the rocky ridges out of reach of prey. We passed a heard of caribou on the mountain top, their majestic antlers reaching skyward. Then we saw our first grizzlies - a sow with her cub, cruising across the tundra high above the road! We crossed the Teklineka River, the stream forever intertwined with the fate of Chris McCandless, the protagonist of Into the Wild. This is the river he was unable to cross and thus was stranded in the wilderness and starved to death just north of this very spot. We soaked in the vast scenery and the braided, silt-filled rivers as we passed soaring golden eagles, foxes hunting small mammals, moose feeding on bushes... and more and more grizzlies - we saw eight in all with the last one just off the road, unnervingly close to our campsite. We returned to our camp and enjoyed a few beers around the campfire, until the midnight dusk... then fell asleep in our tents to the pitter-patter of raindrops outside. On our last day in Denali, Andrew and I signed up for a white water rafting trip down the Nenena River. We donned our dry suits and met class III and IV rapids of glacial melt water - a balmy 37 degrees Fahrenheit - as they splashed us in the face during our bounce down the river. We dried off and drove up to the North Pole for the night... well, a cabin in North Pole, Alaska - a small suburb of Fairbanks.