You do not need to pay an entry fee to drive the first 15 miles of the Denali Park Road. That portion is paved and you need to turn around before crossing the Savage River. There is a limit on vehicle size and towing a trailer on that portion is not recommended due to limited space at the turnaround. Quite often you will see moose, caribou and even bears while still on the pavement so keep all eyes open and watch for where other vehicles are stopped. The one thing you WILL NOT see from that section of the park road is Denali itself. So if you don’t have alot of time, take the short drive and hopefully you’ll be rewarded with some wildlife.

It's a long way - 90 miles - form the Park Entrance to Kantishna Road House on a mostly one lane gravel highway. The drivers are experienced and it shows on some of the passes - no guardrails and it's a long way down. We were fortunate to leave hours before the road closed for the season due to a landslide.

We took the general admission (green) bus which was pretty interesting and informative and saw a moose right next to the road just a mile or two in. We enjoyed ourselves even though the weather was misty and overcast. Our favorite part was getting out at the end and walking 2+ miles to the rock slide, which is fascinating to see. Along the way, we saw a white, very woolly wolverine on the hillside above us! The only other place we might have considered walking is along sable pass where there are likely to be animal sightings but we didn’t do so because of the weather. If you do, be aware that you might have to wait up to an hour for another bus that has room for you to jump back on. Obviously this isn’t the experience we’d hoped for when starting to plan our trip 2 years ago but stuff happens in the national parks and you just have to roll with nature and enjoy it!

I have been anticipating getting a Timed Entry Ticket into Denali National Park this year. The sight indicates that they are available 14 days prior and it used to provide an example of the rolling availability. Based on that date we tried for tickets. You must first be logged in to the recreation.gov. My husband and I were at two separate locations trying with two accounts. You also must watch the 4 minute video. We were on the sight 20 minutes prior and kept refreshing the site and putting in how many tickets- in our case we selected (1) ticket using an interagency pass. You click the date and nothing happens or changes. The calendar indicates it is "not yet available" but we kept trying from 11:50 am-12:30 pm. The zero with a line through it appeared when you try to select any date. I tried calling recreation.gov and chatting for clarification on the process but waited two hours with no luck. I called the Denali NPS for help and no one knew there how to do it. They just said they "sold out" in minutes. We also tried yesterday just in case with the same results. This website and process in infuriating and antiquated. There isn't any indication on the site if the tickets have sold out or not. Terrible process. Our only option now is to buy a bus tour at 3-4 times amount this ticket would've cost it.

We visited Denali at the onset of fall. I highly recommend fall when the leaves are changing to yellow and red. We did this drive several times over 3 days. If you want to see a moose, I suggest making this drive in the evening. They seemed to be more active at that time of day. We only saw moose and a porcupine. If you want to see bears, you’ll likely need to take the wilderness your beyond the 15 mile marker. Bears are in the area because we saw bear scat on the hiking trails, but we only saw them on the bus tour. Even if you don’t see any wildlife, the views are spectacular, even if you aren’t part of the 30% fortunate enough to see Denali in the distance.

You can only go 15 miles into the park if you are driving your own private vehicle. However, if you go on a tour, you can go as far as the road goes. We went up to mile 65. Got great views of the mountain since it was a clear day.

We took the Tundra Wilderness Tour, which took us along over 60 miles of Park Road. The scenery along this road is both varied and spectacular. The park was very colorful in September. Denali is visible from several locations along the road, and we were fortunate that the weather was clear and we were able to see the peak. The road also traverses several of Denali's beautiful braided rivers and climbs up the treacherous Polychrome Pass, which offers expansive views of the gorgeous landscape below.

I planned a last minute trip to Denali with my daughter and as a result was too late for bus tickets. That meant we were restricted to driving the first 15 miles to the Savage River Bridge. Still a beautiful drive and we had a clear view of Denali and observed some moose. Great park but try and get tickets to get the most of the journey.

We had a party of 7 consisting of a 10, 11, and 12 year old, 2 40somethings, and 2 70 year olds. We went on the narrated Tundra wilderness tour. Honestly, we love things like this, but this was boring. It might have been partly because of the smoke from wildfires made the views just okay, we saw a few caribou, a dall sheep that was far away. The driver spotted it, and put it up on the screens, which was cool. I understand that they cannot control the wildlife, but even I dozed off, which is not my style. Now I also have to add that we only went to mile 42 because of the washed out road, but if the rest of the road is as boring as the first 42 miles, they should probably just not repair the road.

The Shuttle Bus trip was very enjoyable, the bus driver was not very enjoyable but we were there for the scenery. We saw so many different wildlife species. The mountain never disappoints! Wish we would have been able to go to the end of the Park Road but they didn't allow that this year.