Alaska - Day 5

Wednesday, August 20, 2008:

Dad and I went on a park tour today, utilizing the park shuttle buses to do so. Denali National Park does not allow people to drive their own cars past mile 15 in the park, so the only way to really see a lot of the park is on a tour. There are all sorts of tours, but we went with one offered by the park itself, as it was affordable and fit our schedule. It was also available - we didn't know it would have been helpful to book some of that stuff ahead of time. Regardless, the tour we took worked out fabulously well, and I have no complaints.

A little about the park - it's enormous. Honestly, gigantic. I don't have the stats on hand at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I once read that the park is bigger than the state of Massachusetts. Google that if you want. :) The only road in the park runs for about 96 miles, and it barely touches the surface. However, it takes about 7 hours to drive the entire 96 miles, and then you have to turn around and drive back (it's not a loop like other parks) unless you stay in the expensive lodge at the end of the road. Because we didn't feel like spending 14 hours on a bus (basically slightly modified school buses), we chose a shorter tour that turned around at mile 66 - Eielson Visitor Center. The scheduled time for this trip was 8-9 hours, also a long day. We had to buy box lunches and bring snacks and water, as the park doesn't sell any food in the park. They do this to help keep the animals wild - once they taste human food, they don't forget it and pursue it. Thus, even though we had to spend $16 for a sandwich and chips (basically), I support the park's decision.

We started off at 9:30 am, and we wound up having an excellent tour guide. We weren't even guaranteed commentary at all, so this guy was a nice surprise. He told us a great deal about the park and the wildlife in it. A nice bonus! Along the way, we stopped about every hour so we could get out, stretch, use the bathrooms, take pictures, etc. It worked out quite well, and I never felt super uncomfortable. We also were allowed to get off and go hiking on our own if we wanted; if we had done that, we could have just caught the next bus and rode it instead. We chose to stay with our bus, which was just fine.

The road itself is only paved for about 15 miles, and then it was gravel. Additionally, the road wound through the mountains, both up and down, and it was quite narrow at times. We actually had to stop at some blind corners to make sure another bus wasn't coming around the corner! The drop offs were steep, and several of the passengers had to switch sides because they couldn't handle seeing the drop off out the windows. I didn't feel too nervous, but I did choose to buckle up during these stretches. I don't know why I did, as there is no way a seatbelt would have saved me if we had rolled off the side of the mountain, but it felt comforting regardless.

Along the way, we had fantastic views of Denali. Seriously - the views we had are what they print on postcards. Absolutely stunning. We were able to exit the bus to take pics, and I think I got some decent shots. We were still about 40 miles away, so my camera can only do so much, but the image is etched into my brain and it was fantastic. We also saw some other amazing scenery - rivers, streams, other mountains, etc.

As for wildlife, the second main attraction after Denali, we saw 5 grizzly bears, numerous caribou, a lynx (third to the bottom pic), a coyote, and some dall sheep in the far distance. This was a very successful wildlife outing, as seeing a lynx is very rare. Dad was the first one on the bus to see it, and he called out stop so the driver would pull over. Go Dad! The guide also said it was rare to see a coyote, but I've seen them before so I didn't know that. We didn't see a moose, which I guess is odd, but Dad and I had already seen two outside of Anchorage. No wolves either, but they are quite elusive. I would have liked to see a bear closer than we did, but you can't control the animals. I feel lucky to have seen what we did.

After about 4-5 hours, we arrived at our end destination, Eielson visitor center. Sidenote - My sister Amanda teaches at Carl Ben Eielson school in Fargo - cool stuff. The center had fantastic views of Denali and the entire AK range. As we pulled in, the clouds started to gather around Denali, and by the time we left the center, Denali was almost completely covered in clouds - we were very, very lucky to actually see the mountain! One person we heard of has been to Denali four times, and he has only seen the mountain once! Yay us and yay weather! We hiked around the center a bit, and then it was back on the bus for the return journey. By that time, I was feeling a bit tired of being on the bus, and I think others were too - it was a lot quieter for the most part, and people seemed to stop looking for animals (except Dad, who saw the lynx, and the woman in front of us, who spotted the coyote).

At about 5:30, we pulled into the Denali Visitors Center and left our green tour bus behind. We caught the hotel shuttle and went back to our room for a bit to rest before dinner. Before leaving for the tour, we had purchased tickets to cabin night, a dinner theater production put on at our hotel. I was a bit worried that it might really suck, but it turned out to be pretty dang fun. The dinner was family style (delicious ribs, salmon, corn, biscuits, potatoes, beans, and blueberry cobbler), and we met nice people from Kansas and Sydney, Australia. We had a great meal and great conversation, all the while being served by Alaskan Amber, who stayed in character the whole time. Pretty dang funny, as her character was a bit...slutty to say the least. She really cracked me up though, and it was fun. After the meal, they put on a little show, and it was charming. Hokey, but really fun - I couldn't help singing along and smiling the whole time.

After the show, it was time for bed. We were both exhausted. Who knew sitting on a bus all day was so tiring? :)

So far, I'm having an absolute blast on the trip. So glad I came here to see this - who knows if I'll ever make it back here!

Some random notes:

• Denali and Mt. McKinley are the same thing. The Athabascan natives called the mountain Denali, which means the tall one, and many local folks still call it Denali. Its official name is Mt. McKinley.
• We saw both taiga and tundra in the park. According to our tour guide, taiga is almost tundra, but it has trees on it. Tundra just has smaller ground plants. Both were beautiful, and the tundra was already starting to show its fall colors. I imagine it will be breathtaking in 2 weeks, and it probably is the same in the spring, as it flowers.
  
• The shower in our hotel room sucks. It alternates between spraying freezing and scalding water. I think it actually burned my foot! I had to do an odd little dance to wash my hair and rinse off the soap. Not cool. The only other time I experienced a shower like that was in Brighton, England.
  
• I forgot to mention that we saw our first Target store in all of AK - it was in a town called Wasilla, between Anchorage and Denali. The Wasilla area is the third most populated in the whole state. Since we saw a Target there, we now wonder if there is a Target in Anchorage. If so, we could have avoided Walmart. Oh well.
• GLBT issues in AK - my Lonely Planet guide actually says that this isn't a gay friendly place and to be careful in deciding whether to come out. Wow - it can't be good at all if the book actually says that. It's not like I'm always running around shouting out that I'm gay, but sheesh! I hope our lesbian friends from the train stay safe - they mentioned that they had seen the same warning, so that's good.
• The train runs over 700 moose a year - wow!
  
• Most of the rivers in the park (if not all, I'm not sure) don't contain fish because they are too filled with glacial silt. That's a lot of silt!
• This last picture was taken at 11:30 pm as I was standing on the deck outside my room at the McKinley Chalet - still some light!