Month: June 2024

Yesterday’s travel on our viewing car was stunning. A two floor car where above gives you panoramic views of wilderness, lakes, vistas, mountains, and wildlife. And below the dining car where you ride thru Alaskas countryside without a care in the world.

This pic was our goodbye to the train. We’re solo now in Anchorage, AK. Now both with head colds it’ll be nice to sneeze and cough on our own. Lots of people were getting sick by the time Denali came around. Close quarters on coaches, boats, planes and trains, we’ve done them all.

Good meals on the train. This burrito tastes like a good smoked sausage. You wouldn’t know.

We get settled into our room after a long day of travel. Turn on the TV and I see travel Alaska channel on. I’m watching this and thinking dang, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to do here. It’s all about nature. The mountains, the wildlife, the sea, the lakes, the glaciers, the weather, and how it affects things. It’s massive, historic, ancient, beautiful, and if you can you must try to see it with your own eyeballs.

I understand how it makes people want to move here. It’s rough and rugged but it takes your breath away.

Man is in the forest. There are times I just shake my head at people. Those with ancient ties here understand respecting the land, the animals, and nature.

The disrespect of things we’ve seen here like in the gold rush was out of control. If you’ve seen it, your head would shake too.

The natives weren’t motivated by gold and riches. It didn’t help them like fur, food, or tools would. In all of this, it seems to come back around to protection and preservation. We are slow to realize that there is only one earth, only one of that species that drop our jaws. Respecting the land and what it gives you can’t be under stated. It’s a delicate balance. Ok, I’m done ranting. I’m part of it too. dmc

Today is the last day of our guided tour, aboard an Alaska Railroad dining/observation car. This is a nine hour ride from the station in Denali National Park to Anchorage.

Like yesterday’s views, the landscape is peppered with head-scratching out-of-place outcroppings.

Starting in essentially the same area as yesterday’s tundra tour,

we were hopeful for a Denali sighting as the route would pass about 30 miles to the east.

Alas, not today. For something so massive, Denali is quite shy. Still, the views never disappoint.

Like the sign says.

Switchgear in remote areas are manual, not electric. Sometimes in the winter months, the conductor has to use a sledgehammer to clear ice from a switch so it can be flipped.

View from the 918’ long Hurricane Gulch Bridge, constructed in 1921 over a mere 90 days. Where our train stopped. For ten minutes. 296 feet above Hurricane Creek.

Did I mention that all 7 cars plus locomotive stopped on this 103 year old bridge 296 feet above the gulch floor for ten minutes? I overheard several pleas of “okay, we need to move now.”

Big Lake. No, really, that’s the lake’s name.

About 20 miles north of Anchorage, looking across the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet. The mile or so swath of grass and sand between the trees in the foreground and water way out there seems like a nice beach.

Except, that’s not sand. It’s all silt from glacier runoff, at least 600 feet deep. This silt is finer than talcum powder and more dangerous than quicksand when wet. It can be walked on when the tide is out and it’s dry.

Head for the hills when the water rises, though, because that beach becomes a trap. The advice is, if you’re in up to your ankles, get help fast, because there’s no way you’ll get out by yourself. Do it fast because the average tides are 26 feet.

Fauna spotted today: one moose, about a half dozen trumpeter swans, and an osprey with a flying fish heading out for dinner.

Clouds pulling a curtain down on the mountains. Sunset is an hour earlier, at 11:36pm. What a difference three degrees of latitude makes. G’night, Anchorage!

June 11th travel: 230 miles by rail from Denali NP to Anchorage.

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?