Day: August 10, 2009

Up pretty early this morning to catch the train to Denali.  We were supposed to be in the lounge for departure by 7:10, although we didn’t end up getting off the ship til closer to 7:40.  Princess seemed to somewhat drop the ball on this, because apparently we were supposed to have boarding passes to get on the train, and nobody did, so they were giving us little post-it notes with our assigned table.  Decent but long train ride (about 10 hours). Did happen to see a bore tide just as our guide was talking to us about them, that was kinda neat to see (basically, the tide coming in as a long wave that runs all the way up the
inlet).  Food was fairly pricey on the train ($5 for a cinamon roll, $11 for a cheeseburger).  Kinda amazing just how tired you can get when you sit on a train for 10 hours doing nothing.

Get in to Denali and it seems Princess screwed up again here.  A very significant portion of those arriving had keys that didn’t work on their doors (including ours).  Thankfully we managed to get it taken care of relatively quickly, but I suspect some people were waiting a while.  Luggage had managed to arrive in the rooms though, so that’s good.  After getting into the room and dropping stuff off, went out in search of some food.  Ended up eating at the pizza place at the hotel.  Crowded, so getting a table was tough, and very pricey ($30 for a 12″ pizza, some breadsticks, and 2 drinks).  However, the pizza was actually pretty
good.

Then it was off to get to bed at a reasonable hour, since our Tundra Wilderness Tour was scheduled for 6:30 the next morning.  Ugh.

Most of this day really qualifies as a day at sea, then with some scenic cruising in College Fjord conveniently timed to line up with the dinner hour.  Unfortunately, it also means it’s the day to pack things up, since it’s get off the ship early tomorrow morning.  So we spent a while in the early part of the day gathering everything together into the separate suitcases, 2 of which follow us to Denali, 2 of which we’ll see again in Fairbanks.

College Fjord wasn’t bad, with several glaciers that reach the water.  Ice conditions were good, so we made it all the way back to Harvard Glacier, which is quite impressive.  It also was fairly active while we were there, with several chunks calving off.  Unfortunately, the biggest of those was while we were still headed straight at the glacier, and we hadn’t thought to head up front on the ship, so only could sorta see it.  A fair amount of other pieces falling, but nothing quite as big.  Bunch of seals hanging out near the glacier, and on the way in and out we did see some otters and some porpoises.

Tomorrow morning it’s get up way too early to catch the train to Denali.  Something like a
10 to 11 hour train trip.