We woke up at 4:45 AM (bright light outside) as we were scheduled for the 6AM bus tour of the park called the Tundra Tour that goes 54 miles into the park. It’s a seven hour journey. When we went outside, the smell of smoke was in the air from the nearby forest fires and the sky was very hazy. Our bus driver had been doing in for 10 years and did his schpeal sounding very much like Mr. Rogers neighborhood. This quickly put Marjorie to sleep. He promised us moose early on but none were sighted. We did see quite a bit of Lupin and blue bell flowers in this area. The first real animal to be seen was a lynx that crossed the road in front of the bus. We managed to get a glimpse of him in the brush but he was too hidden to get a photo. We moved on out of the forest and above the tree line. The next animal we viewed was a herd of Dall sheep high up on a mountain. The first rest stop yielded a Willow Ptarmington that posed quite nicely and some snowshoe rabbits. There were also some Lupin flowers there. We moved on and saw some photographers in the road. We stopped to see a Large Grizzly Sow with a yearling cub. We sat there for quite a while and got some great photos while they ignored us. On we went and at one of the next rest stops there was a bachelor band of Dall sheep posing on the rocky cliff just below the rest stop. They were spectacular! We moved on and saw the misc. caribou way off in the valley but we never really got close to any. We were given box lunches on the bus that had sandwiches made of Reindeer sausage and cheese. We also saw two Moose way up on the hill but never did see any of them close either. We did see a Merlin which is a type of hawk sitting in a tree very close to the road. Also of the bird variety there were Mu Gulls, supposedly a Golden Eagle that was only seen by people on the other side of the bus. Some Grey Jays which I never saw and several more Ptarmington. We never did see Mt. McKinley. The visibility with the smoke haze was about 8 miles and even from the farthest point the tour bus goes, the Mountain is still a good 30 miles or more. We went back to the hotel to prepare for our horse ride. For our horse ride we took a van 18 miles north on the Parks Highway past the town of Healy and then headed west down a gravel road. On the way we saw a Grizzly bear playing in a stream and a Moose cow with two calves. We got to the ranch and the horses were already tacked up with western tack. The horses were all part drafts, mostly Belgian crosses that were rodeo bucking string washouts. I got a large palomino named Chewie, short for the Chulita river. There were about 10 in our group altogether. Most were not accomplished riders. The biggest challenge was to keep these guys from getting their head down to eat. We crossed Tundra which was really awful footing for the horses. It had beautiful wild flowers though. We came back through the Tiaga that had more woods and more solid footing. Everyone survived and the total ride duration was about 1 hr and 45 minutes. When we got back we walked back over to the Salmon Bake restaurant. Each of the Adults ordered “The most powerful Margarita in the World” . It wasn’t that big but it certainly was powerful as we were all pretty blitzted for the walk home. I woke up with a massive headache at 4AM that wasn’t even phased by the aspirin I took. Ann and John both reported headache’s and my mother took it the hardest and was puny all day the next day. I did get to try the halibut tacos, which were good but not great. We walked back at 10:30 at night and it was still very bright out.