Denali National Park is beautiful at any time of the year but for many visitors, autumn is when the park is at its peak. Each September, for a four-day period beginning the second Friday after Labor Day, the park uses a lottery to sell 400 permits to drive the road for a day. Normally the 92-mile road is accessible only by bus. This gallery of photos offers a glimpse of the park’s scenery and wildlife made during the lottery periods this year, and in 2006 and 2008.
They don’t have wings but a group of central peninsula motocross riders enjoy making their bikes fly. Daniel Gentry of the Dirt Napp Krew explains his thoughts as his bike takes to the air, where he and other Krew members perform tricks for awed fans: “You just have to put all your fears behind you and just go for it, because if you’re afraid, or you half-attempt something, that’s when you get hurt,” he said.
Images of the Dirt Napp Krew motocross group performing at Twin Cities Raceway fly here. Take a ride.
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Each July, red salmon return by the thousands to the Kenai River’s mouth in downtown Kenai to finish their migration upstream to spawn. And with the salmon, come hungry Alaskans, also by the thousands, their minds set on using a dipnet to fill their freezers and canning jars with the tasty flesh of the prized fish.
The act of collecting the salmon is one part subsistence, one part carnival as beginners and seasoned pros mix their families and techniques in a fishery seen few other places.
