The Alaskan Experience: The Land

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Our Alaskan journey is hard to sum up in words but I will try anyway. All of our expectations were far exceeded, every turn brought such new experiences and “Why didn’t we do this sooner”. As our plane began its decent into Fairbanks, it was immediately obvious that this was no ordinary vacation.

As we settled into our first night in Alaska in June, it hits you of the strangeness of the daylight. By midnight, your body says go to sleep but your brain says “wait a minute the sun is still out”. I remember waking up at 2:30 am because I just needed to see what 24-hour daylight really is. It was cool!

Everything there is big. The land, the trees, even the annuals grow to an extra-large size since they are receiving so much more sunlight.

Out on the paddle boat tour we encounter our first eagles. Wow! They are just over your head; they are in trees and nests along the river. Amazing birds with broad wing spans.  You feel like you can touch them.  

We watch from the boat deck and via live video feed how they train the dogs for sledding. Beautiful animals with great speed and stamina. And they love to relax in the river.

Our journey continues as we make our way down to Denali Park. The scenery is incredible. We pass lots of birds, moose in the distance, and spectacular views of mountains, valleys and sky just incredible sky.

The tour guide asks the driver to stop the bus ahead. She is giddy. There it is. It’s out today. I ask what is out. The mountain, Denali. Where? I don’t see anything. Just clouds.                                                           Its not a cloud it’s the mountain. Wow, incredible, wonderful. No that does not fully describe it.

 

 

We learn at that moment that is a special treat to see the full mountain without some cloud cover. Only about 33% of visitors will experience it. Not only did we see it that day,                                                it was out again the next day while we were in the park.

As we make our way to the lodge, the scenes change. We are now along the river with twists, turns and rapids. As the day progresses, the sun moves around in the sky shining                                            on one mountain face after another until it does a full circle.

In the evening, we have booked a horse drawn carriage ride and BBQ. We meet up with our carriage driver, our tour guide and the team of horses. Beautiful pair of horses. We start out down a long trail to our BBQ hut nestled between the mountains. We see more moose, eagles, goats and an assortment of beautiful birds.

We enjoy our BBQ and head back to the base house with shimmering mountains all around. Its about as dark as it is going to get which was not very dark. Back to our lodge for a walk along the river.

The next “morning”, we board our yellow school bus for our journey through Denali National Park. The park is huge. 6 million acres.  Roads only venture into the park for a short distance.

We are on the lookout for wildlife. We see snow hares along the side of the road, birds flying overhead. As we make a turn in the road, we see a mama moose and her baby walking  along a dry river bed. Further along more moose. As we head into the flat lands, we see small specs on the mountainside. Its Dahl Sheep. They can climb the sheer cliffs and stay protected.  They dart around high above the tree line. The protection of the sheep is why this area became a national park.  We come up to a guard house and pass into the restricted area. Access is only via special permit.

Soon the paved road ends and we are on gravel. As we drive along, several of us shout Wolf! The bus comes to a slow stop, everyone is silent. Out in the distance is a large wolf. Grey and White. He sees the bus. As I grab my camera and look at him through the telephoto lens, he stares right back at us making eye to eye contact. The gaze is a few minutes.  He turns around and slowly moves away. We are all mesmerized. There only 70 or so wolves in the park. We have seen one of the largest.

We looped around to start our journey back passing caribou a.k.a. Reindeer, more moose, porcupines, ravens. And yes, Denali in all it’s glory.

The next day we head down to Denali State Park. This borders the national park. Once again incredible views. We now see Denali from a different perspective. Further away but framed by different mountains. The setting is beautiful and we enjoy watching the changing weather around the mountain.

The next day we are off to Talkeetna. This is the base camp for all who want to climb Denali. Great little Alaskan town right on the river. We have a boat tour that takes us out into the river and we see more bald eagles feeding along the river bank. We are looking for our first bear sighting.  We see salmon swimming up into the streams. We stop at a little island to see some  remains of a hunting lodge and are told to be vigilant for bears. There are ton of moths flying around. We see interesting plants. The tour guide stops at a native plant called Bluebell.  She hands us a flower to eat. A lite taste. Back on the boat we head back to Talkeetna. After a great lunch of halibut and king crab we head back to our lodge.

The last day of our land tour, we head back to Talkeetna to catch the railroad to take us down to Anchorage and the cruise ship. In Talkeetna, the train station is just a spot along the rails. The train pulls in and we board. We are in a domed car so we have a wonderful view of everything we will pass on the journey.

We pass great expanses of land, with mountains in the background. Beautiful lakes with every variety of water vehicle. As we move further south, there is more development. We pass by backyards of homes that have small planes parked in their yards. We see remnants of floods from storms and melting glaciers. And still the eagles are there!

We reach Whittier and near the end of the journey. We stop at the light just before you enter the tunnel and the last part of our land tour. It’s a multi-purpose tunnel. It allows cars to pass going to the port, then it allows cars leaving the port. Next it switches to the rail and allows the train to proceed to the port. Finally, it allows the train to leave the port.  The light turns for us and into the tunnel the train goes. As you emerge from the tunnel, you are right along the port. We see the beautiful ship that will be our home for the next seven days. 

We disembark from the train and embark on to the ship and the next part of the adventure begins.