Vacationing at Denali.

• Author: Ess, Charlie
• Position: Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska

There was simply little any of us could do but crowd the center aisle or hang out the windows of the beige bus. We'd come to a full stop on the narrow gravel road, just past the Savage River in Denali National Park, our eyes fixed on two grizzlies-a sow and a yearling cub-that shuffled into the bottom of a dip in the road ahead. Cyclists stood beside their bikes, taking in vistas to the south while our view afforded us an uncomfortable prescience. They didn't see the bears.

There we hung. While several of us gasped, others titled the happenstance by rolling videotape or snapping up their final frames of film. At the height of the encounter, the yearling false-charged, rose to its hind legs, swatted the air several yards from the terrified bikers, then dropped to all fours, pivoted on its heels and moved on.

For many, the narrated natural history tour was the pinnacle of a visit to Alaska. In less than four hours, they 'd seen grizzlies, caribou, sheep, moose and marmots, not to mention the 20,320-foot mountain itself.

For ARAMARK, Denali National Park's concessionaire, it was just another day of delivering the experiential, a treasurable commodity if you know how to package it.

"Today's travelers want more than comfortable rooms, pleasant meals and good photos," says Ingrid Nixon, interpretive resource specialist for Denali Park Resorts. "Contemporary travelers are discerning and interested in having a complete experience."

For 21 years, ARAMARK has been authorized as the main hospitality provider at Denali. Its holdings, lumped under the name Denali Park Resorts, include McKinley Village Resort, McKinley Chalet Resort and Denali National Park Hotel. These include a total of more than 600 rooms and three eateries: Nenana View Restaurant, Lynx Creek Pizza and the Alaska Cabin Nite Dinner Theater (a mixture of cuisine and Vaudeville). In addition, the company operates scenic and white-water rafting trips on the Nenana River and various narrated and interpretive bus tours through the park.

With even a preliminary glance of the activities, it becomes apparent that the company offers too much to compress into a single day. The Tundra Wildlife Tour, for instance, takes upwards of six hours.

With limited time, or in consideration of young children, an alternative option is to pan for gold near the banks of the Nenana, then take the late-afternoon Natural History Tour and finish off the night at the dinner theater.

The panning, a new program last...