Anchorage

On Thursday we said goodbye to Denali, hopped aboard the Alaska Railroad and enjoyed our 7.5 hour ride to Anchorage. We had another overcast day, so again we didn't see Denali Mountain. We were bummed but Denali Mountain is only one of millions of sites about Alaska that's beautiful. I'll quit gabbing & let the photos speak for themselves.

Sorry, no oceanfront property in Honolulu, AK.

Our first glacier-spotting!

 

Osprey nest

 

On Friday, we had one of the highlights of our trip. My dear friend from my travels in Up with People, Wendy Emond, and her family live just outside Anchorage. We got treated to a locals' view of her fair city. We skipped the touristy museums in exchange for Beluga Point, Kincaid Park, International House of Hot Dogs (reindeer hot dog with bison chili, anyone?) & Moose's Tooth Pizza (quite possibly the best pizza I've ever had). It was wonderful seeing Wendy & meeting her awesome family! Not to mention, it was the sunniest & warmest day we'd had thus far, a sweltering 70 degrees. Many thanks for playing tour guide to us, Wendy, Chris, Wyatt & Toby!

Beluga Point - named for the Beluga whales often spotted here (no such luck for us).

Outside Kincaid Park, Wendy pulled the truck alongside this behemoth.

No zoom required - this guy was right on the side of the road!

Inside Kincaid Park, we spotted moose tracks... (mmm... my favorite ice cream)

...and bear tracks.

Waiting to get into Moose's Tooth with Wendy & Wyatt.

Denali

In August, the sun does not stay up 24 hours a day in Alaska. Most evenings it went down between 10:00-10:30 PM & was up again between 5:30-6:00 AM. We began Wednesday at the crack of dawn, literally, in preparation for our 13-hour Denali Backcountry Adventure. This is the most complete trip into Denali National Park, traversing the entire 95-mile restricted Denali Park Road. We boarded our surprising comfy Blue Bird school bus & began our trek.

We were only about 8 miles into the park when the woman behind me hollered, "MOOSE!" Our driver happily stopped and let us snap our pics. This huge bull was VERY far away & my camera wasn't mounted on a tripod, so sorry for the blurriness.

The next twenty miles or so went by fairly uneventful in regards to wildlife. The day was overcast & a little drizzly yet the scenery was still amazing.

 

A few miles later, the woman behind me hollered, "BEAR!" At this point, I started calling the woman behind me "Monkey Spotter," a nickname I gave Buzz in Costa Rica because he was so good at spotting Capuchin Monkeys. We were rewarded for our patience with a mama bear & her two cubs. Mama was voraciously eating every berry she could find, putting on much needed fat for her upcoming winter hibernation. The cubs must have eaten earlier as they were more interested in a mid-morning nap than anything else.

 

 

A little farther along Monkey Spotter saw a small herd of caribou...

...another bear....

...another small herd of caribou...

 

 

...and the motherload - a bear that didn't require using the full zoom on the camera!

 

We made several stops along the way but my favorite was the Eielson Visitors Center.

 The mountains in this pic are about 5,000' tall. Denali Mountain could be seen from this spot on a clear day. It's four times taller than these at 20,000'!

My new life motto

A beautiful quilt inside the visitors center

Two moose racks preserved after the two moose were found dead, their racks locked together from fighting.

Six hours after we began, we literally reached the end of the road & the Denali Backcountry Lodge. I did the math, we averaged about 16 MPH.

 

Thank God for porta-potties at the end of the road (there were real bathrooms; I just thought this was funny)!

 And an airstrip in case you've had enough & don't feel like riding back out on the bus.

We had a nice two-hour break at the end of the road that included lunch & some hiking. One thing to know about Denali National Park, like Africa, it has its "Big Five" that you will be fortunate if you get to see them all. The five are bear, moose, caribou, Dall sheep & wolf. We saw lots of Dall sheep, but they are always on the mountain-tops, so photos of them look like white specks, so I didn't bother to take any. Our guide told us that the wolf population was down to 47 in the entire park, which is 6.2 million acres. He had only seen 4 over the course of the entire summer, so we weren't holding out breath.

We made a little bit better time on the way out, taking only 5 hours instead of 6. Our guide was talking with us about something when he abruptly stopped the bus & cried "wolf," only he wasn't kidding! A wolf had trotted down the hill behind our bus & he saw it in his rearview mirror. It then hung out between our bus & the one behind for a few seconds. I missed the shot, so thanks so much to Judie, (Monkey Spotter), for the photo she got!

Not one of the Big Five, this is a ground squirrel, commonly known as a "bear-ito."

A couple of ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird.

We did it! We saw all of the Big Five. Even with the weather not being great & not getting to see Denali Mountain, we were elated! The 13-hour round-trip was the fastest 13 hours of my life. My eyes were glued to the scenery the entire time, and there was never a dull moment. Check one destination off the Bucket List!

Travel Day: Fairbanks to Denali

We left Fairbanks on Tuesday & traveled 4 hours south to Denali on the Alaska Railroad.

 Our conductor (the Snickers bar is a whole other blog I plan to write someday).

 Old telegraph poles dotted the landscape. They are now on the National Register of Historic Things (didn't know that was a thing) and cannot be removed.

 Alaskan sense of humor...

 Our first snow-capped mountains!!!

 We were told we could see Denali on a clear day.

 Sadly, it was not a clear day.

 It was beautiful nonetheless.

We were met at the train station by a hotel shuttle, handed our room keys & taken right to our room. Nice! We stayed at the Denali Bluffs Hotel. Our room had a nice view from the balcony, but there was a sister property, the Grande Denali Lodge, that was at the top of the mountain, so we took the free shuttle up to the top.

 

 The GM had quite the Alaskan sense of humor.

The amazing panoramic view from the top of the mountain.

We took the shuttle into town & found a cute little village full of souvenir shops & eclectic restaurants. We grabbed "Bear"itos at Black Bear Coffee House, a place famous for serving coffee from beans roasted in Alaska. Funny story - one of our shuttle drivers was bragging about how amazing the Alaskan coffee was. She ranted about how it's grown, roasted & everything right there in Alaska. Being a coffee nut, I knew there was no possible way coffee could get enough of a growing season in Alaska, so I asked about the "grown in Alaska" part. Oh, but she was ever adamant it was definitely grown there. Poor thing. Haha!

With no scheduled activities today, we took it easy after lunch & checked out the shops.

My favorite shirt with more Alaskan humor.

We had dinner that night at the hotel's Mountaineer Grill & Bar. I was still stuffed from my huge "Bear"ito, so only had a salad. Buzz scoffed that I should throw the salad in the yard then kill & eat what comes to eat it. That said, he had buffalo chili & reindeer sausage. Both were tasty!