Memorial Day Weekend

For the four day holiday that Michael and I had, we decided to go camping with a photographer friend of his named Jon. Jon also brought along his friend Matt. If you think camping is pulling your RV into a campsite and hooking up your electric and water, you'd be in for a big surprise. Along the Denali highway, you can camp at pretty much any pull off, and in Wrangel-St. Elias National Park it's pretty much the same way. You just find a fairly smooth spot to pitch your tent, and then make sure your camp fire and food is far enough away that the bears don't bother you in the middle of the night.

We didn't see any bears this trip, but we did see some other interesting wildlife. We saw about half a dozen porcupines, and Michael chased one several feet, trying to get a good picture.

We also saw two brand new baby moose, probably about one or two days old. Mama was right there nearby, though, so none of us tried to get TOO close.

This bull moose is the first one that Michael has been able to get a really good picture of his racks. It's too early in the season yet for him to have really big racks, though.

Inside the national park is a "ghost town". It's an old copper mine that even though the copper company abandoned it, the park service and tourists have taken over, so there aren't too many ghosts around. All the old buildings looked really cool, though, and if you go on about a two mile hike, you can touch (or climb on) a glacier.

It was a really fun trip, and we ended up with about a thousand pictures. Literally--Michael took around 800 with his camera and I took around 300. That's not counting the pictures Jon took. The computer is letting me add any more photos so I can't download a picture of Michael with his camera. Oh well. Maybe next time.