Oct. 9

“It was a dream come true”, said Stephanie Ciulla of her experience in Alaska’s Denali National Park.

Ciulla, from Arlington, Va., captured the top-rated image in this week’s It’s A Snap travel photo contest.

It’s a place she says she’d always wanted to go. As luck would have it, earlier this month her friends won Denali’s Park Road Lottery, which gives visitors a rare opportunity to drive along the entire 92-miles — where only tour busses are usually permitted — and invited her along for the trip.

In the park, they spotted grizzly bears, moose, wolves, bald eagles, and a lynx — a rare sighting, even for locals.

Ciulla said she snapped the winning shot with her Nikon D70, just as the sun was rising, around 7:15 a.m. “I was a bit bummed out because it had been raining and snowing. But then I looked in the rear-view mirror, and it cleared up enough for me to take the picture.”