Thursday, August 30, 2007

WILD ALASKA BLUEBERRIES

An other day in Denali NP and a new adventure. We took an other cheerful green camper bus ...... and we got till Wonder Lake, the end of the road. Wonder Lake is famous for its mosquitoes and for the reflection of the mountain (Mt. McKinley / Denali). 90 (180 roundtrip) miles from the park entrance. 60 (120 roundtrip) miles for the two of us, because we were camping in the Teklanika campground. Bumpy road, but you can really see how the wildlife is changing. When we left the campground the mountain was very visible. By the time we got to Wonder Lake it was covered by the clouds. So no reflection for us. But also, no mosquitoes. Apparently, due to the little snow and the cold winter we had, this has been a blessed year. Very little mosquitoes in Denali. During the bus ride we did learn a lot. For example the diet of the grizzlies in Denali is 80% based on blueberries. That is why they are not as big as in other areas where they eat salmons. An other interesting thing is that here there are no bees. So is left to the mosquitoes to spread the pollen from one flower to an other. So if you make 1 + 1, you can easily conclude that it is because of the the mosquitoes that we have grizzlies in Denali. From things like this, you realize how wonderful but incredibly fragile are the ecosystems. And how much we don;t care about all this in our daily life spend in our urban cages. Anyways ... once we got in Wonder Lake we went for a bush walk. Actually it turned out the sweetest bush walk ever. The bushes were blueberries bushes. Loaded with blueberries ...
... and we loved them. And we started to eat some of them. Till we decided to bring home some of them. We didn't really have a bag. So we decided to use the water bottles. A unique experience. And no grizzly came out of the bushes to claim his berries ... :) ...We used them also for breakfast for a couple of days. This is our daily oat meal with fresh blueberries. Absolutely phenomenal ...

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