Category: Travel

Happy Anniversary to us!

To celebrate, we chose Alaska, as big as it comes. This is a different kind of vacation where relaxing time is when you can fit it in. All the rest of the time, it’s go, go, go. We wanted this “go Alaska” before we weren’t able to “go” quite this way. Oh there are plenty of “go” types here and we are on the younger side of the older side if that makes sense. So hats off to the “go people”.

Traveling to Alaska should be on your bucket list. Plan to go, go, go also. It’s really the only way to see what this state has to offer.

PUPPIES! For us the trip is complete with holding a puppy. These 10wk old pups were a feature visiting in the main lobby of the chalet. Actually dogs are a popular attraction here. The story of how Balto saved the children and town of Nome Alaska from dysentery lives on. It’s an amazing story. Our family grew up on the story which they made into an animated feature. We all loved it.

Which brings us to these amazing puppies. They have a job to do. It’s in their DNA. They get so excited as adults to pull the sled.

So for now our job is to love on them and acclimate them to humans. No problem. We got this.

Dinner, ah the halibut nuggets. Amazing! The best of the best. Flaky beer battered halibut, fresh tartar sauce. Delish!

I “schmooshed”my Bernaise sauce before I took the pic but boy was this tender and delicious. Me with a side of asparagus and Dan a side of potatoes au gratin. And to celebrate our Anniversary….Thank you!

It was fitting to order this dessert while in Alaska don’t you think? We ate it all.

So here’s to 35! I love you. Where do we go to next? dmc

Today we went on a Denali tundra wilderness excursion. The industrial strength school bus took us 42 miles south on Park Rd. No farther because of reconstruction where a landslide made the road unsafe. Not a landslide exactly, but an area of moving rock and ice, a rock glacier.

The terrain ranged from forested areas in lower altitudes to tundra, mostly low ground cover and various shrubs but sparse trees.

“Braided” rivers like this cross the landscape. Fed from snow and glacier run off, this one is really near the peak of its volume. They never fill that rocky area. This one was occupied by a glacier for millennia, but it was completely melted several decades ago.

The line across the mountain on the right is Park Rd. The V between the near and distant ranges is where one would see Denali, absolutely towering over the closer mountains. On a clear day. Today was not one of those days.

On our way in to the Denali area yesterday, we did get a glimpse of the mountain. This pic is from about 100 miles out. Even this far away it dwarfs all the ranges before it. Crazy, huh?

The geology here fascinates me.

Wildlife seen: caribou. Full disclosure: this was maybe a quarter mile away. We did not have a camera with a telephoto lens. The bus has screens fed from a video camera the tour guide uses to zoom way in to sightings. “Stop! Something at nine o’clock!”

Gets you up close and personal.

Momma grizzly and cubs about a half mile away. Just dots moving around the mountainside to the unaided eye.

Also spotted were one moose, many Dall sheep, ravens in a nest built under a bridge, red and Arctic ground squirrels. Oh, and mosquitoes.

Hats off to our tour guide/bus driver, Nan. Super knowledgeable about the park’s flora and fauna, she’s a retired school teacher from Texas. Obviously a teacher at heart, when a guest had a question about a shrub growing on the side of the road, Nan said “well, come on!”, brought her over to said plant and answered all her questions. Gotta love true educators with that kind of passion, even in retirement.

For dinner last night, we went to a pizza joint a short walk from the hotel. Sitting at the adjacent bar, enjoying our conveyor belt pizza (it was actually better than I make it sound,) when we overheard another couple talking about how this is not a good New Jersey pie.

Two guys at the bar join in, with the same lament. We, of course, chimed in. Pork roll, not Taylor Ham, was also brought up.

What are the odds that in a little bar 4,300 miles from New Jersey, in the interior of Alaska, 6 of the 7 occupants came from the Garden State?

… for 15 seconds. But I’ve got my love to keep me warm.

… Alaska residents have, or are working on obtaining, a pilot’s license.

Many of the smaller aircraft trade their wheels for pontoons when the ice leaves the rivers. Pontoon planes are so prevalent that the Fairbanks International Airport also has a lake next to the main runway for these planes. This is a 1952 Piper Super Cub. It can take off and land in as little as a couple hundred feet at half the speed you drive on the interstate. There’s many of these old craft still very much in service and well maintained.