a vacation in denial, pt. 2

The day after Wonder Lake, Anna and I went back to Stony Dome to catch a picture of Denali out in full sunlight and then caught a bus all the way back to the entrance. We were on a lucky bus; they had apparently seen the wolves chase a caribou and a caribou calf earlier, and while we were on the bus we saw several bears and a crapload of caribou. One bear walked right past our window as we all sat inside and took zillions of pictures, and we also saw a mother and cub, very cute. I almost got whacked on the head by an over-zealous elderly man with a very large zoom lens (we all made a lot of phallic comments about this) during the bear-by-the-window encounter. By the end of that ride, we were both so annoyed by the other people on the bus, who would make us stop for ten minutes every time we saw a caribou grazing in the distance.
At the entrance, we drove to meet Erica and co. at a pizza place, and then we all headed over to the Salmon Bake (a bar/reataurant/club thing) to see a bluegrass band from Colorado. We slept at Jeff's cabin that night, then I drove all the way back to Toklat the next day using Erica's road pass. That was exciting, mostly because it takes about 3 or 4 hours and involves some very high mountains that are a little scary. We spent most of the rest of our stay taking walks and talking to Erica, plus one well-deserved day of mostly just reading at the end before we left.
I wish in some ways that we had done more, been more adventurous with our hiking or gotten out more or something, but mostly I feel like we did what we could with our time and energy. We didn't see the wolves, which I wish we had, but it's not like wildlife just appears at your beck and call. Mostly, I just enjoyed the beauty of the place, and I am so glad that we got to experience it in a kind of behind-the-scenes sort of way, so that we could be a little more than all the people who travel there and ride a bus for 8 hours and never get out and say to their friends that they've seen Denali.
The drive back was mostly uneventful: we missed a campsite by 8 minutes one night after driving 800 miles and had to sleep in a motel, and the next night we slept in the car because it was raining and we were too tired to deal with the tent one more time. Montana is beautiful, and I think that of all the places we visited I might like it best there, in someplace like Bozeman. It's beautiful. We went to Yellowstone for a night and part of a day, and hiked a little bit and saw old faithful and some wildlife. We watched a herd of buffalo cross the road right in front of us, eventually scaring a bunch of stupid tourists who had gotten out to take pictures despite many warnings about the danger, before crossing the Yellowstone river. It was beautiful and cool, but there were too many people. There are gas stations inside the park. For some reason that really bothers me, and I feel a little more in sympathy with Edward Abbey.
But now I'm home, the adventures over and no one to tell. We found an apartment in Chicago and have already signed a lease, and we're setting out in about two weeks. I guess that's where the journey will really end, for now.