Tag: Denali

We took our time getting around on Monday, but we finally made it out to the park. We were kind of looking for animals, but mostly just enjoying the scenery. The park’s visitor center had a couple of movies on we watched. The first one was about the history of dog mushing in Denali, and it was fascinating. The park has the only active dog mushing crew left in the NPS, and the dogs are used throughout the winter months to support scientific and enforcement tasks. They are very proud of their dogs known for being the old style, big freighter dogs instead of the smaller racing style. The second film was basically just a travelogue of the park in all four seasons with breathtaking photography. The center was a zoo, filled with people who all seemed to think standing in the middle of a walkway was appropriate behavior. The park store was worse. It was pretty small, and it was very crowded. Then again, we didn’t get there until around noon!

We decided to drive the 15 mile section of Park Road accessible to cars. Lovely scenery, but we really didn’t take any pictures. Then we saw Mount Denali had decided to show herself! I took 15 photos, but I will only show 3. She is about 75 miles away from us here, and my little point and shoot was at its limits, but she is definitely there.

Everyone I have talked to about seeing “The Mountain” was right: she is big, she is beautiful, and people just do a lot of staring with their jaws open. I know I did.

After seeing Denali, we went back to the motorhome with big smiles on our faces. We had a caravan travel briefing about how to get into our campground in Anchorage (complicated!) and places we might want to see along the way. We then caught a bus to the Cabin Night Dinner Theater a few miles south of the park. The food was pretty good, and the show was fun. It was a series of vignettes about life in early Alaska with a very talented group of singer/actors. Not at all vaudeville like the Palace theater in Anchorage. This was very professional. I highly recommend!

Today we got a bit of surprise when we woke up – huge fluffy snowflakes! Here is an iPhone video I took.

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The temperature was 33 on our weather station. And guess what? We had an ATV ride scheduled for today! We made sure we had warm clothes and rain gear. We also went to the local grocery store in Healy, just north of our place, to get some perishables. Kevin ended up going back to the park store to buy a knit cap, but the weather ended up being gorgeous by the time we got to the ride location at 1:00.

We were pretty tired from bad sleep and the ride, so we came back to the motorhome, changed clothes (I took a warm shower too), then went to dinner. Best meal of the trip so far was at Prospectors Pizza in Denali Park. We had fried ravioli for an appetizer, then their Gold Rush pizza. We had 2 pieces of our 13” brick oven pizza left over! But we did find room for crème brûlée for me (there is always room for crème brûlée) and a chocolate cheesecake for Kevin. It was really outstanding.

We heard Denali was showing her face again, so back to the park we went. However the cloud cover and very flat conditions meant it was impossible to photograph. After the previous day, we were satisfied with our memories. We did enjoy seeing park staff or volunteers out walking with young sled dogs beginning their training. We passed 6-7 of them, but we only took pictures of this photogenic young lad.

Tomorrow Anchorage.

We went as a group to “The Alaska Salmon Bake” at Pioneer Park on Friday evening. We had been warned the salmon would be over cooked, so almost all of our group chose prime rib. Excellent choice! It was tender and juicy, and the roasted potatoes I had with it were fabulous. Kevin had prime rib with macaroni and cheese. The mac was definitely so-so. The cheesecake afterwards was more than I could eat, so I took mine in a to go container and had it for dinner the next night! After dinner we went to the Palace Theater on the grounds. It was a vaudeville-style show starting off with a great piano player who did a sing along of early 1900s music. I knew most of the songs, and I had so much fun singing. I miss group singing so so much when we travel! After the singing, various vignettes were done regarding early Fairbanks history. Old fashioned fun.

We saw a sun dog on the way back to the motorhome.

On Saturday we headed the short distance to Denali and the Denali RV Park and Motel. We stopped at an old Alaska traditional place, the Monderosa. We definitely recommend this place! Great burgers and fish and chips plus nice folks running the place. The RV place doesn’t have much of a motel, but the RV sites are level with solid hookups. The fact that they are pretty short and narrow is just part of the experience, or so we keep being told.

We went to bed at 9:00 on Saturday because we had to meet the bus for our naturalist trip into Denali. Regular vehicles can drive 15 miles into the park, but to go beyond that requires riding an approved bus. There are two types of buses. One is for hikers and sightseers who want an inexpensive method of seeing the park. No narration, just a hop on, hop off kind of thing. The second type of bus is a dedicated one with the driver adding naturalist commentary. It is a physically nicer bus, provides a snack box, water, and a souvenir booklet (quite nice BTW). The goal is to see wildlife, and the bus stops whenever someone spots something along the road. This is the type we had, and since we the caravan made a special type of group reservation, the bus even picked us up at the campground. The fact that it was to leave at 4:50 am was not mentioned until the day before!

We climbed on, almost awake, and took off for the park. We couldn’t leave the bus when we saw wildlife, but the windows are big enough for lots of picture taking. We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see. Be kind about the pictures; I have a simple Canon point and shoot.

A grizzly bear close to the road.

A young moose a long way from the road.

Dall sheep, a first for me. These were a loooonnnnngggg way away, but my binoculars confirmed I am correct in the identification. You’ll have to trust me.

And caribou! Another first for me. The males have the super long antlers while the female antlers are smaller. Males lose their antlers after the rut, but females keep theirs until late winter meaning all Santa’s reindeer (domesticated caribou) are girls!

Of course the scenery was interesting too. We won’t be seeing the Denali mountain from here because of the rain and clouds, but nice views without that. It started off rainy, then we had some partial clearing.

After a nice nap when we got back to the campground, Kevin and I decided to take a short road trip south on the road we will take to Anchorage in a few days, just to see the sites and pull-ins we can’t do in the motorhome. When the clouds came down and it started to rain, the mountains became ethereal and fascinating. They basically disappeared into the mists.

We did see something a bit different – the tourist train headed into Denali from points south (Anchorage and others). That would be a fun ride!

We ended up at the 49th State Brewery just north of town for an early dinner at 4:30. Beer was ok, and the food was good. Very busy though!

Tomorrow we are on our own until the evening when we attend a show. More on that later.