July 11: Fairbanks to Denali

To say today started out rainy would be an understatement. It poured and poured and poured. Before I even got on the coach I was drenched all the way through, as was the scooter. If it was up to me I would have waited out the rain, but I’m on someone else’s schedule so off we went to the river boat cruise. We sailed on the down the river while getting a taste of Alaska.

We stopped to watch a bush pilot do takeoffs and landings.

Saw sled dogs at work pulling a four wheeler.

And watch them play in the water. As if they weren’t wet enough.

Learned about fish wheels and drying fish.

And even saw reindeer (domesticated Caribou), all from the comforts of a covered paddlewheel boat. Funny sidenote: As the reindeer approached the water’s edge everyone gasped and ran to that side of the boat. What people didn’t realize the reindeer had purposely been let out in that area for our tour. It reminded me of the “cue the deer” scene in the movie Funny Farm.

At one point the tour stopped so we could get off and explore the Athabascan village. While they provided umbrellas, Scooter and I - along with a lot of other people - decided to stay on board.

Only when the tour was over did the rain start to lighten up. I was able to sit outside and eat a little bit of a sandwich before we had to head out on the bus to our next stop, Denali.

It was about a 2 1/2 hour ride from Fairbanks to the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. We stopped about halfway, and I probably was more interested than I had been all day when I saw where we had stopped. 

A couple years ago I had watched a documentary called Classic. It was about the small village of Nenana in Alaska who had a yearly contest where folks tried to guess the date the river thawed. It’s an interesting little movie and I’ll definitely be watching it again. Especially since today our tour stop there for a bathroom/snack break. If you haven’t watched it you should, and if you have watched it the importance of these things in the pictures will make sense. 

 

We were then back on the road to finish our ride to Denali. Here are just a couple pictures from along the way. (I fell asleep during a chunk of the trip so I might’ve missed just a few things.)

We got to the lodge and were given our packets with our room assignments and keys. Wouldn’t you know it, my room is about as far away from the main building as possible. They have complementary shuttles that run guests back and forth, and I waited for a while, but finally gave up and headed out myself.

And that’s about when I cursed whoever made the room assignments. Go down the hill and around and uphill, uphill, uphill. Oops, only stairs there. Turn around and go back down the hill, go around, and back up another hill again. Scooter doesn’t like hills, so I was having to push him up the bigger ones. 

The pink marks the crazy way I took to get to my room.

But then as soon as I opened my door, I no longer cursed the person who assigned it to me. It’s an accessible room (kind of) but it appears to be a suite. It’s huge!

Can’t get worried about that pet peeve of accessible rooms having bathtubs.

This one also has a shower. With two showerheads! And yes, I tried them both out at the same time.

And that balcony and that view! 

Most people are heading on the Denali National Park tour tomorrow, but I decided not to go and took a credit instead. Ed and I went to Denali several years ago when the entire park road was open. Have you ever had one of those experiences where it was so good you don’t want to do it again? The Denali Tour is like that for me. Especially now since a good chunk of the road is closed because of a slide. Can’t get it any better than we had it then.

Tomorrow’s another travel day onto yet another Princess Lodge. See you then!