This is the story of the first day of the rest of my life - 14 July 2007.  The day I met Dick Merrill, Alpha Grizzly.

As I mentioned in my previous post Denali National Park requires visitors to move about the park on buses in order to minimize impact on the single road that runs through it.  Each person camping in the park has to purchase a shuttle bus pass in order to move through areas outside of their campgrounds.  We chose the Wonder Lake tour, since it would bring us almost as far into the park as you can go and offers the only groomed hiking trail in the entire park (after the Savage River checkpoint).  Basically you get on a bus, ride it to the end, and then ride back out.  If you get out and hike you just grab the next bus that comes along.  Our bus driver on the way into Wonder Lake was Darlene and she was really wonderful - we saw a lot of great wildlife and she also knew a lot about the wildflowers.  Technically these aren't "guided" tours but the camper bus drivers obviously know their stuff and do an excellent job of keeping the passengers entertained.  There are periodic stops for restroom breaks and picture taking.  Here are a few of the best photos from our trip from the Teklanika Campground to Wonder Lake.

Three guesses as to who took that one.

This is one of several caribou we saw during our day trip.  Since both male and female caribou have antlers I can't say which this is - we'll say girl:

Darlene was very excited to see these two red-throated loons:

Josh never misses an opportunity for a geology lecture:

One of my favorite areas was Polychrome Pass.  Sometimes landscapes end up being kind of boring, but not Polychrome:

We planned on getting out and hiking at Wonder Lake, which boasts the McKinley Bar Trail.  This trail is about 2 miles each way (it goes in and then out, it doesn't loop back around) and it is an exceedingly easy hike.  No major elevation changes, no seriously steep areas, just a brief stint on some talus slope.  It was however, raining, so we got pretty wet in spite of our rain gear.

Wonder Lake marked the end of our day with Darlene.  Little did we know that one Dick Merrill was right around the corner.

It took us about an hour to do the McKinley Bar Trail, pictured below:

We even had a run in with a stubborn ptarmigan mommy who wouldn't budge until her chicks had crossed the road - insert your own joke *here*:

So after a really rainy hike we ended up back at the Wonder Lake bus stop.  A green camper bus was there and a few campers got on it but the bus driver did not say word one to us.  We just assumed the bus wasn't available for us to take back in so we waited.  And waited.  And waited. 

Finally another bus, driven by Lee rolled up.  He was surprised when we told him the first bus driver just took off without letting us know he had room for us and Lee let us know another bus was coming (the bus you can ride depends on the pass that you purchased).  What Lee didn't tell us was that the name of that bus was DESTINY.  Thank you, jerkface bus driver who just left without us.  You changed four lives that day.

I honestly have no idea why I took this picture of Dick Merrill's name tag but obviously the first thirty years of my life were leading up to this return trip from Wonder Lake to Teklanika Campground.  This man, this Dick Merrill, he is a mystery:

Dick Merrill can't be photographed.

We were very cold and very wet and we knew we'd be on that bus for at least a few hours.  At first the prospect of that long, cold ride seemed bleak but it soon became apparent that Dick Merrill was sent directly to us from God, or Providence, or whatever.  In fact, it's entirely possible that Dick Merrill is God.

I have literally never had a more amazing bus ride in my entire life.  I think it took us about five hours to get back to the campsite but by the end I didn't want to get off the bus.  An example:

There is a tiny blue tent in the left foreground of this photo - you can probably barely see it, if at all.  When Dick Merrill saw that tent he was enraged.  Park rules dictate that backcountry campers must set up out of view of the Park Road.  As soon as we rolled up on the next park ranger Dick Merrill stopped to let the guy know about the campers.  As the bus rolled away, and the park ranger started driving back toward the tent, Dick Merrill said, "That guy's not going to get out of his truck and walk all the way down to tell them to move.  Not like it's his job or anything."  Dick Merrill is clearly King of Denali.  Now he's King of Cones, let me tell you what.  I'm half in love with this guy.

You need to know something about this Park Road.  It winds around some perilous mountain ridges and in some spots the road is only wide enough for two buses to (barely) pass one another.  It's actually kind of scary at certain points, especially if you're sitting on the side closest to the edge - you look down and just see a straight drop and no road at all.  If you ever go to the park I recommend looking straight ahead.  With this in mind let me show you some of the animals Dick Merrill spotted while navigating the aforementioned perilous mountain ridges:

This bird (lower right-hand corner) is going to have to remain unnamed - the piece of paper on which I wrote everything Dick Merrill taught me is lost and gone forever.  But let's focus on the fact that this man pulled over on a road approximately 25 feet wide to show it to us.

The hoary marmot shown above sits atop a rock and doesn't even move when we pull up.  I'm telling you - Dick Merrill is like Doctor Doolittle, only even more mysterious and totally badass.

Dick Merrill is magic.  We're riding along and it's raining on and off and suddenly Dick Merrill screeches to a halt along this narrow road on a sheer cliff and yells, "Look!  Pika!"  When I saw the pika I realized that this guy either communicates with animals telepathically or we are in serious danger because he is not watching the road. 

That little gray dot?  Pika.

Dick Merrill doesn't just deliver the tiny animals of the arctic tundra, however.  His spell reaches over all the creatures of Denali.  This red fox was extremely obliging:

But Dick Merrill has an especial affinity with and for the grizzlies of Denali, hence the moniker Dick Merrill, Alpha Grizzly.  Dick Merrill calls the bears with his bus.  We pulled over to see a grizzly making his way out of a hedgerow and through the tundra, where he disappeared (the vegetation is surprisingly tall).   

Dick Merrill cut the bus engine and sat quietly for a few moments, then re-started the bus, cut the engine again, rolled forward ten feet, and said bear emerged as if on cue:

Dick Merrill snagged us at least six of the eleven total grizzlies we saw on our Wonder Lake tour.

David contemplates his Dick Merrill experience at the Toklat rest area:

There are at least four people on this earth who are forever enchanted with Dick Merrill.  And yes, I know that I only refer to him as "Dick Merrill".  When you have a name as cool as Dick Merrill you can only be called Dick Merrill.

We were so obsessed with this guy that the rest of the weekend was spent weaving our own speculative tale of how Dick Merrill came to be.  I don't want to give it all away, because David and I are seriously thinking about creating our own graphic novel starring Dick Merrill, but I will tell you that our beloved Alpha Grizzly was raised from childhood in the park by deer falcon and was eventually recruited by the U.S. government to kick some serious ass in Vietnam...

Also, from now on, whenever you sneeze, I'm saying "Dick Merrill" instead of "God bless you".  Just an FYI.