Outdoors/Adventure

Photos: Late Season Trip to Denali National Park

Every September, before it closes for the winter, Denali National Park and Preserve opens its 92-mile park road to a few lucky lottery winners and their vehicles.

It's an opportunity for those fortunate lottery winners to drive into what is perhaps the most iconic wilderness of 49th state -- some 6 million acres of wild land bisected by a single road. This year, 1,369 of the 1,600 winners of the road lottery showed up Sept. 12-15 and paid $35 for a one-day permit and entrance fee that allows them to drive as far as Wonder Lake on the road, which is usually closed to private vehicles.

Even with 20,320-foot Mount McKinley shrouded by clouds much of the day, animals were the big attraction. Grizzly bears, foxes, caribou, Dall sheep, wolves and even Arctic ground squirrels were about.

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