Just about everyone I know who has been to Alaska has described it using two words, “Big” and “Beautiful”. It had been a secondary destination for me, in that I never had specific plans to go there, but always wanted to. This last December presented me with the perfect excuse to finally make the journey. My youngest sister Kim had always wanted to go to Alaska, and in December she graduated from college with a degree in secondary education. My graduation present to her, a trip for her and her son, Riley, to Alaska. Six more months and we were leaving Seattle in route to Anchorage, flying Alaska Air of course. I didn’t really know what to expect, other than something big and something beautiful. [Begin Alaskan Journey]
Wow, how can I begin to describe in words and images this vast ever changing landscape. This journey was in America (so the exchange rate sucked) and the people are American, I found the culture not much different than that of any town in the Midwest, perhaps because of the long cold winters. However that is where the similarity ends. With a landscape so huge that most people travel via single engine plane rather than car you start to wonder, biodiesel, electric, is the Toyota Prius missing a huge market here? There is so much to explore, so much to see, so much to feel, and so much to experience, that it requires a life time of travel. Glaciers larger then skyscrapers that shake your core as they come crashing down in to the sea, Mountains so massive that they challenge your perception of distance, vast plains carved up with countless rivers traveling endlessly in all directions as if they had a mind of their own, and abundant of wildlife that leaves you feeling insignificant and with good reason. Yeah, I guess it’s true, Alaska is best described as big and beautiful.
"Free yourself and see the world" - phynntravels@comcast.net
Today we had a morning boat trip down the Chena River and then we had an afternoon flight back to Seattle. We got on the Discovery III boat along with two to three hundred other people. While this looked like it would be a huge tourist trap it was actually well done.
We headed down the river and saw a sea plane take off, this is pretty common as almost everyone out here has a plane in order to cover the travel distances when going from one place to another.
In fact they can land and take off just about any place, no matter how small.
We stopped along the way to see dog sled training at four time winner of the Iditarod, Susan Butcher’s kennels.
We passed a few reindeer along the way before arriving at the Chena Village.
While this was not a real working village it did have a very authentic feel and was well worth the stop.
It did have authentic tour guides and an old lady who grew up in a village very similar to this one. She made amazing clothes and could gut a fish in minutes using only her teeth and fingers.
And just like that we were back at the dock, catching a shuttle to the airport. Our original flight was delayed so they put us on an earlier one, which stopped in Anchorage so we were actually an hour late. The journey had ended.
We were heading to Fairbanks this afternoon but had the morning free. I checked it out and after a few tries was able to find a flight around Denali Mountain before our train left so I jumped on board.
Because of the weight distribution required I was able to ride shotgun, the pilot asked if I knew how to fly just in case something happened to him. The lady behind me looked worried and did not seem to get the joke so I replied with a confident “Yes”. Then to put the worry back in her mind I asked, after sitting down but before he stared the engine, “Of the two pedals on the floor which is the gas and which is the brake?”
We took off and headed in the general direction toward K2.
We first viewed the peak before diving down underneath the clouds.
We were amazingly close to the side of the mountain.
We then flew over one of the many glaciers around the base of the mountain.
Just as we had the landing strip in sight the lady who was worried apparently wanted to lose some weight, so she threw up her lunch, fortunately getting it all in the vomit bag.
Even thought it was cloudy it was still an amazing flight, and I got back in time to catch the train, meeting Kim and Riley at the station. The train was again relaxing and beautiful, however I think the section from Anchorage to Seward was more senic.
Once we got to Fairbanks we tried to collect our luggage, only recovering two out of the three bags, it turned out the hotel forgot to bring one of them to the train station. They were very sorry and drove it up the following day, now that’s customer service, I figured they would have taken the easier route and just sent it back to Seattle. We checked in to the River’s Edge hotel, which were cute little cabins on the river. We ate at their restaurant, which was a nice outdoor patio on the river, and then went to bed. This was as far north as we were going and it never even got dim here, staying light all the time. In fact even the special shades could not keep all the light out as 2am looked just like 2pm.
We got up and jumped on the bus early this morning. It was an old school bus with a driver who thought we were all second graders. This guy tried to make it seem like we were heading in to the unknown and could die any moment and that he was our only hope of make it through safely, kind of your typical park ranger ego, however this guy was not even that, only a want-to-be ranger. He felt that we even needed his help in drinking hot chocolate in telling us the correct mixing method. In order to try and sound more important he learned a few big words which he used over and over again.
We headed in to the park making various stops along the way, and let me tell you, this park is big and beautiful. You can’t privately drive in to the park, however you can take a shuttle in and they have an inner-park shuttle service that allows you to get around more efficiently when camping place to place.
We did see a few grizzly bears, caribou, wolf, eagles, campers, hawks, and of course doll sheep. I was never able to catch any great still shots of these but if you watch the video I captured some nice video of them. This was mostly because what we saw was way off in the distance and my video camera had a better zoom then my still camera. It also became apparent that a large portion of the people on the bus were suffering from a mild case of mental retardation, as anytime we saw something like a duck in a pond they jumped up and ran over people to get to the window to see and then proceeded to wet themselves in excitement. We stopped at the Kantishna Roadhouse for lunch, this is the one hotel that is actually inside the park.
This was a cool place and really gave you the feeling of being out in the park, including the endless swarm of mosquitoes that attacked.
Before getting back on the bus we had a chance to pan for gold and Riley found some, but not enough to buy uncle Chris a beer for lunch. Here is a shot of Riley before he fell in the river.
After drying Riley off with a hairdryer we climbed back on the bus to work our way out again.
At one of the stops we climbed up to the top peak and it boy it was windy.
It was a very long day, we saw lots of cool stuff and were all pretty tired at this point.
We ate in town at a pizza place, which was the perfect food for the day, and then headed off to bed.
VIDEO: The Road to and through Denali National Park
The original plan for the day was that Kim and Riley were going to go check out the Dog Sled training and I was going to take a K2 flight around the mountain. However with only one out of every six scheduled flights actually able to fly because of cloud cover it was a long shot for me to get off the ground, in fact too long and my flight was canceled. So we headed in to town for lunch, or what they called town, this was very small, but had a good vibe and I really liked it. Some typical tourist stores and some regular stuff as well.
The power was out in town because of the forest fires, so Riley helped out by eating some ice cream before it melted.
You can pretty much walk anyplace you want to go, but they also have a taxi.
We then ducked in to the West Rib pub for lunch. This was a great place where you can write on the walls with a marker, order up a Caribou or Ox burger (I tried the Ox), and suck down a beer that was 9% alcohol .
We headed back to the hotel to catch our bus up to Denali. We stayed just outside of the park at the Denali Bluffs hotel. This was a cool place with views of the park entrance and walking distance to the town of Denali.
This town made Talkeetna look like New York, in fact I was able to fit the entire town in one picture.
It, like a lot of the towns here is largely seasonal, shutting down in the winter months. We turned in early as we had an early and all day bus trip through Denali National Park tomorrow.
