Alaska Adventures: Day 3--June 21

Mon. June 21: Well, it turned out that Ann really regretted that we hadn’t gone to the Festival, too, so maybe we need to be more insistent. But today was very, very full so it may be just as well that it didn’t work out. We had to have our bags out in the hallway by 7:30 so we were up early. We had a cheese stick and a cereal bar for breakfast with our endless cup of coffee from the shop. We walked around the lodge a bit as the sun dodged in and out of the clouds, making for a nice morning. We saw 4 beaver on the Chena. The bus to Denali left about 9:30 and got to the Denali Princess Lodge around noon. It was a long ride, made a bit longer by construction on the highway, but the driver gave us a lot of information on the way, which helped pass the time. The most interesting thing we saw was a herd of 4 moose in a meadow about 200 yards from the road. Being “at Denali” was nothing like we expected—one side of the road had a couple of cruise line lodges and the other side was a touristy looking strip mall, and the lobby of the lodge was bedlam, with people arriving and leaving. The Denali Princess Lodge is made up of 10 or more buildings and has its own trolley-like shuttle that carries people around the large campus, which overlooks the Nenana (say neh-nahnah) River. Our building was very centrally located. We grabbed a quick bite to eat from our supplies and climbed on the converted school bus to go on our Natural History tour. That’s when we found out why things looked so crazy near the lodge. The park road within the National Park “proper” is only 65 miles long. The first 14 miles are paved and cars aren’t allowed beyond the pavement. There are shuttle buses that take people into the park but there are no developed trails in this wilderness area. Our very informative driver told us all about the park history, the flora and fauna, and a little about the Athabascan culture. During the long drive we stopped at the Wilderness Center for an introductory film called “Music of Denali”; the Savage cabin that is now used as a by-station for the dog sledding Park Rangers in the winter and had a costumed interpreter harking back to 1940; and at the end of our trail, an Athabascan woman who talked and sang about her culture’s respect and love for the mountain. We saw a group of four caribou feeding in the Savage River from both directions. It was a pretty good way to get into the National Park and get some well-rounded exposure. But we also learned that only about 1 out of 8 people actually get to see Mt. McKinley (the legal name for the traditional named Denali) because at 20,320 feet it makes its own weather system and is almost always covered by clouds.

We returned to the lodge just in time to clean-up and walk over to the Denali Dinner Theater. It was a fun, energetic, musical show about the area settlers and the first team to climb Denali. The actors were our servers first and kept us well supplied with the all-you-can-eat salmon and ribs. It was yummy! The sun was shining on the mountain tops as we left at 10:30 so Ann, Marv & I went to one of the hot tubs, which overlook the river and the hills across it that are part of the National Park. The nearly full moon was setting above those hills, it was a mostly clear sky and the temperature was probably in the low fifties or so. But the hot tub was really hot and the setting was absolutely STUNNING!! The only thing that could drag us away was the knowledge that we had to have our bags out by 8:00 so we reluctantly left and got to bed at just about midnight.