Every year when the summer season ends and bus tours stop the park service allows a certain number of people to drive their personal vehicles into the park. This is called the road lottery and we were some of the lucky winners! 
This raven was showing off for us a few miles into the park.
This raven was showing off for us a few miles into the park.
We saw several groups of sheep throughout the day.
The first bear of the day. A solitary bear doing what bears do...eating and digging.
The first group of bears we saw. It seemed to be a mother and two 2-year old cubs. Mom was teaching them how to dig out ground squirrels. As you can tell the cubs weren't really interested until all her hard work paid off.
She dug a HUGE hole to get to that ground squirrel. In the picture above you can barely see her in the hole.
Got it! And she didn't share a bite!
Check out that smile on her face!
After that they sauntered away doing their own things.
The Mountain view from Stoney Hill.
Not much better from the Eielson Visitor Center.
The only caribou we saw all day.
It pretty well showed itself late in the day when we made it out to Wonder Lake (90 miles out the park road).
Someone was trying to be funny by turning the "bear warning" sign into a "beaver warning" sign at the lake.
A few miles past Wonder Lake is an old gold mining district called Kantishna. I was very excited to see it because we had never been past Wonder Lake. A legendary prospector and extremely hard core woman, Fannie Quigley, lived in Kantishna from 1910 until she died in 1944. This is the house she died in, but not where she lived during most of her time there. Her story is well worth reading...http://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/quigley.php
Just past Fannie's house and the air strip is the end of the road.
On our way out of the park we had a nice bull moose sighting.
Ending the day was one incredible sunset. It sure was a fantastic day in the park on our own schedule. We didn't get out of the park until 10:30 or 11 that night.