Fooled you all. You thought we were through with Alaska. But, no – Lou was motivated to give me his photos, and I am motivated to post them. The upcoming photos are from Lou’s trip to Denali in the Fall of 2008. He was attending the Van Os Photo Safari session lead by Len Rue, Jr – the same photo tour we went on in 2015. I was supposed to go too, but work interfered, so we decided it was best for Lou to go alone. We needed to use up credits from Van Os for our cancelled trip to Antarctica (… cancelled due to work, grrrr).

Note – all photos in a gallery (a group of more than one photo) can be expanded by clicking on the photo. A slideshow will allow you to cycle through the photos.)

1 September 2008, Monday

These next few posts are significant, because they show Denali in the Fall – just like our previous report, but there was no snow on the tundra, and the fall colors were spectacular. Also, these photos were all taken by Lou. Even though I do include his photos in our reports, he generally gets short changed, because I get worn out processing my own photos. He often has unique perspectives, and it is fun to see how differently we might see the same area.

Starting off from Anchorage, the group was lucky enough to have a full frontal view of Denali:

Understand, I am having to put together this report by estimating where the group is according to the time stamps on Lou’s photos. Typical guy, there are very few people photos or ones showing where they might be at any given time. But it should work out fine, as I believe they followed pretty much the same route and plan as we did in 2015.

Continuing on, they saw some spectacular landscapes, but more importantly, they saw trains! I’m going to guess this was in Talkeetna. This is a good example of the differences between Lou and I – one train photo would be enough for me. He needed to capture the different types of cars on the train. Kind of cool, actually.

Then it was time to capture some close ups of flowers (click pic to expand):

Looks like it was then back on the bus, and they stopped down the road, probably for lunch, and then also at a scenic turnout.

More flowers, taken on their stops along the way:

Even though Lou loves flowers, he did not forget to capture the beautiful scenery along the way:

The photos above were taken after 5pm, so I’m guessing the group continued on to their hotel for the night, staying just outside of Denali National Park. They no doubt had dinner, and left the next morning to meander to the train station, where they would meet the North Face Lodge Bus at 1pm.

A few days ago, I might have said nothing beats Denali in the fall with snow. Now, I’m thinking Lou saw some spectacular scenery, and more fall colors on his snow-free tour. That is why we have to keep going back – it is always different!

Click HERE to follow the group into Denali National Park & Preserve tomorrow.