Day 11

                                                                       Alaska Day 11

                                                                   Denali National Park

                                                                             9/3/11

     One of the reasons that we picked the tour that we did is that it offered “Double Denali.”  That was the precise term that is used by Holland America to denote trips with two nights in Denali as opposed to one.  Not knowing at the time what we wanted to do in Alaska, we astutely recognized that two nights in Denali would be far better than one, perhaps even twice as good, so we excluded any trip that didn’t involve “Double Denali.”  The rest of our trip planning involved finding trips with minimum cruise time and maximum land time fitting into the window of time we had allotted.  We had decided to go late in the season on the recommendation of our son, Nathan, who had been there the year before and not been devoured by mosquitos.  We encountered no mosquitos on this trip and we got to see the fall colors in Denali which lasts about 2 weeks there. 

     Denali, is an amazing park.  There is one road into it that goes west 90 miles and private cars are not allowed past the 15 mile mark, although park busses are.  As I mentioned yesterday, the park is huge and it seems that most of it is inaccessible to the average visitor.  You can hike into it, but except for a few trails near the visitor center and at mile 15, there are no trails that traverse the park.  This is done to minimize human impact.  Even when you are at an area where there are no trails you are asked to walk side by side so as to not create a trail.  It was very inspiring to see the efforts being made to keep this place unspoiled, essentially the way that it’s been for thousands of years.  In the center of the park is Denali, also known as Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet, or about 1000 feet higher than Nathan and I had been on Mt. Kilimanjaro.  They say that only about 30% of the park visitors are able to see it due to likelihood of cloud cover.  Today we’d be fortunate enough to be in that 30% group. 

     We spent the morning hiking up to the top of the Mt. Healy overlook.  This was a vigorous hike and took 1 ½ hours.  Kris made it up most of the way but chose not to go further when it started to get steep.  On top I was treated to great views of the Eastern and Southern valleys and its wonderful tapestry of fall colors.

     The afternoon would be the highlight of our stay there.  It was a narrated bus tour into the park.  We started at 1:30 and got back 8 hours later driving around 55 miles into the park before turning around.  In addition to the spectacular scenery we saw caribou, moose, Dall Rams, and grizzly bears.  It was all very exciting.  We also got to see the magnificent sight of Denali, aka Mt. McKinley.  What a lucky day for the two of us. 

     We celebrated our adventure with a late dinner in the lodge and went to sleep with amazing memories of the day.

Tapestry of colors

Bad hair day at Mt. Healy Overlook

That's a caribou

More incredible colors

That's Denali

Still Denali

A lone sleeping cuddly Grizzly

The Three Bears

Dall Sheep

We were one of the 30% that got to see Denali

Moose that thinks he can't be seen behind that bush

Day 10

                                                                       Alaska Day 10

                                                                    Fairbanks to Denali

                                                                             9/2/11

     Today we headed to Denali.  The mode of transportation was by train.  I knew we’d be sitting a long time so I got a run in along the river in Fairbanks prior to departure.  Then we were off to the depot where a shiny train with two locomotives awaited us.  We boarded one of the rail cars on this train specific to Holland America called the McKinley Explorer.  This car was a completely glass domed double decker rail car, seating around 80 people with your assigned seat on the upper level and the dining area below.  As we rolled along the countryside the views were spectacular.  There was a “guide” in each railcar that pointed out interesting sights and provided amusing commentary along the way.  There was also a bartender at the front and although it wasn’t quite noon yet, from the look of it there appeared to be a lot of Bloody Marys being dispensed to our geriatric bunch.  Maybe this is the key to living well into your eighties.  Overall, it was a very pleasant way to travel.  Midway into the ride we had breakfast below and got to know one of the other couples on the trip that was seated across from us.  They were a lovely retired couple living in Sun City Arizona and after a while it became apparent that all four of us shared the same views on the political spectrum.  Once that was established, knowing that we were all amongst our own kind, we each let loose with bold political statements from the left that would have made Keith Olberman proud.  At noon, after a four hour trip and about 120 miles, we arrived in Denali and were taken over to our hotel, the McKinley Chalet, about 2 miles from the park entrance.

      After we got settled we went back over to the park and watched a dog sled exhibition.  The park maintains a dog sled team to patrol the park in the wintertime.  They are apparently out for weeks at a time as the park is 6 million acres and equal to the size of Massachusetts.  Even though I’m not a true dog lover, I did get a kick out of watching those Alaskan Huskies pull the sled in the demo over 100 yards.  After that we did some hiking around the visitor center and then took a shuttle back to the hotel.  After our own private happy hour we headed across the way to Prospector Pizza and Ale House which advertised 49 beers on tap.  Perhaps because it was the end of the season, they appeared to be out of around 40 of them but we still managed to find a couple that were great and filled ourselves up with plenty of pizza in preparation for the long eight hours of bus sitting that lay in wait for us tomorrow.    

This was the classiest rail car on this train.

Kris, dining in style, while the woman across from her struggles with her bread

Interior of the McKinley Explorer.   Some of the passengers are getting restless awaiting the next round of Bloody Marys. 

A nice scene with our locomotive visible on the right

Taken just before the train derailed

More spectacular scenery

Sled Dogs at Denali

I recommend this place. 

Day 9

                                                                                Alaska Day 9

                                                                           Tok to Fairbanks

                                                                                    9/1/11

     I awoke with a renewed desire to go running again.  I run partly because I enjoy it, and partly as an effort to forestall the onset of the dreaded disease PRM, which in the medical community stands for Premature Rigor Mortis.  It’s quite apparent that some of the fellow passengers are beginning to show some symptoms of the early stages of this.  In fact I was certain that a man sitting across from me on the bus, motionless for two hours, had succumbed to this, but as it turned out he was just in a deep sleep and awoke with a snort when I prodded him.   Anyway, I managed a 45 minute run up and down the main road through town.  Tok’s claim to fame is that it is the “Sled Dog Capital of Alaska.”  In spite of this, I didn’t see a single dog in town, or any sleds for that matter.  I think their “Capital” status may be in jeopardy.  More disappointingly, there wasn’t a single pastry shop in sight so I returned empty handed. 

     On the bus we saw a documentary about the building of the Alaska Highway.  This 1400 mile engineering feat was accomplished in a mere 9 month stretch of time at the start of World War 2 when there was great worry that the US would be invaded by Japan via Alaska.  It essentially connects the lower 48 to Alaska through Canada.   I could really appreciate how difficult this must have been due to the vastness of the forests, the difficulty of dealing with the permafrost, and the extreme cold. 

     Our first stop of the day was at Rika’s roadhouse.  This was what passed as a hotel in the early 1900’s.  Travelers would arrive on foot and travel from roadhouse to roadhouse, about 15 miles apart, on their journeys.  They provided a bed and a hot meal for purchase, eerily similar to the Westmark Inns of today.  (Had Holland America existed then, I’m sure they would have bought them all up and turned them into Westmarks.) Eventually the roadhouses went out of business when the automobile became the predominant means of transportation.

     The next stop was in the town of Fox where we got a close up view of the Alaskan pipeline.  This 48 inch diameter pipe stretches 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay in the North to Valdez in the south where it is pumped onto tankers.  The final cost for this was 1 billion dollars which in terms of oil company money is just a drop in the bucket.  Up close you see that the pipeline is not ridged but flexible vertically and horizontally to account for the movement of the land related to changes in temperature.  They also run “pigs” through this periodically between pumping stations to keep it clean.  They are running less oil through this all the time and there is already debate about what to do with this pipeline when the oil runs out. 

     Our next to last stop of the day was at “Gold Dredge number 8”, near Fairbanks.  Here we were served lunch (stew and rolls) family style before getting our tour of the dredge.  It was quite a machine with the sole purpose of extracting as much gold from the soil as possible with absolutely no regard to the environment.  One “exhibit” was a crate of prehistoric bones that had been collected there, some likely belonging to saber toothed tigers and mastodons that were mixed in with the muck, scooped up by the dredges and spit out the back.  Doesn’t sound like they had an archeologist on staff. 

     After that we were driven a short distance over to the El Dorado Mine, where we got a Disney-like history of gold mining aboard a narrow gauge railroad and then got to see a modern sluice in action.  Finally, we got to try our hand at gold panning the old fashioned way.  We were given a small sack of “paydirt” which we then put into a pan and then slowly and carefully kept dipping in water allowing small bits of dirt and gravel to run off.  As gold is 18 times heavier than water, we were eventually left with pure gold in the bottom of the pan.  Shockingly, it really worked!  There were gold flakes at the bottom of our pan which we carefully picked up with a dry finger and then tapped into a container.  You then brought it inside to have it weighed.  Kris got $8 worth of gold and I got $24.  Although we were hoping to recover an amount equal to the cost of our vacation, it was nonetheless surprisingly satisfying and a lot of fun to do.  After this experience, I’m convinced that I would have done well as a Klondiker provided that I had a nice chair to sit in with lumbar support while I was panning, a warm place to sleep at night preferably with in-floor heating, a good shower with nice water pressure, a chef, a computer, a masseuse, etc.  Yes, I would have been really good at it. 

     After we had recovered from the euphoria brought on by “gold fever”, we were brought over to our hotel in Fairbanks, surprisingly another Westmark, and then went out to a great Thai food restaurant recommended by Randy.  After walking briefly by the river we headed back to the hotel with the excitement that tomorrow we’d be heading to Denali.  

Rika's Roadhouse....She kept the place up well.

That is the Alaskan Pipeline being supported by a suspension bridge over the river

The pipeline up close

Just in case you were lost

This "pig" cleans the pipeline

Gold Dredge number 8.   These people were never seen again.

We're on a train.  Of course we're happy.

Modern sluice and a lot of excited people.

GOLD!!!!

This 19 oz nugget worth $60,000 was found here.  Cool.

You need a sense of humor when....

......you have to plug your car into this outlet at the shopping mall when it's 40 below.