Truism #1: Pictures of mountains never really come all that close to capturing the actual view and experience.

Truism #2: That doesn't mean we'll ever stop trying.

But what fascinated me about the land in Alaska is how young and raw and active it is. As you can see from this picture, the grass chunks sliding into the river below were, not too very long ago, a wide, solid swath of grass like you see on the other side of the river. In fact, while walking along the river right around the corner from here, we could literally watch huge segments of the hillside slide into the river and disappear down the valley.

Mountains in constant motion - not something I really thought about before.

On the way to our as of yet unknown hiking destination, we had our closest bear encounter of the trip. We're not entirely sure it wasn't us (dinner) he was smelling...

After hiking over and through the tundra to the glacial stream, what did we see sitting in the middle of the stream bed? An all too fresh pile of bear scat. So, of course, we were carefully peeking around every bend in the stream bed, figuring the bear is probably just around the next corner, just waiting for us. A little scary.

Sure enough, right in-between where we were and where we wanted to go, Erika spotted the grizzly. We weren't going to give up and go home, so we just patiently waited to see which direction the bear was going to go. If it went up, then we would go down by the river - and if the bear went to the river, we would go up and around. Sounded simple, but of course, we didn't realize bears do quite a bit of meandering as they look for food. That is, first they look like they are definitely going down the hill so we go up, but then they change directions and go the other way - and therefore so do we. Quite the slow motion - and long distance - dance.

No, we're not running from the bear - we just had to constantly cross and re-cross the stream to keep our feet warm and dry. Glad there are no pictures of the time I slipped and landed right smack in the middle.

We did make it to the source of the stream - a small, old, and dirty glacier with a surprising large pile of dirt on top. It was, of course, well worth risking life and limb to see it.

Then we were so intent on trying to see the goats way up on the mountain we didn't realize we were walking right in the midst of another group with us down by the stream.

Stumbling across the moose antler in the middle of nowhere was pretty cool, too.

We were lucky enough to see a few more animals on this trip - but no pictures of the ones we accidentally came closest to - adolescent wolves about 20 feet away- we were all too busy scrambling for safety.

Back to Wonder Lake for one more night of cold wet camping.

Knowing how rare it is to not have clouds completely obscuring Mt. McKinley/Denali, a fellow camper was kind enough to wake us all up at 2:00am to let us know the mountain was out in all her glory (it never really gets too dark to see up there in the summer). The first view below is what we saw when we stuck our sleepy heads outside the tent - and I have tears in my eyes as I recall just how incredibly gorgeous this was in real life. Credit for the picture below, and at least half the others, goes to my daughter Erika.

I didn't believe it at first, but the rumpled ground in the foreground in the picture above is actually an inactive glacier with lots of dirt on top. Just one of many things learned on this trip. Thank-you, Erika.