Day: August 12, 2009

Had to check out of the hotel by 11am this morning, which was kinda annoying.  So we did that, then checked our carry on luggage at the lodge, and went to catch the shuttle up to the park so we could watch the dog sled demo they run.  When you first get there, they give you some time to wander around and see the dogs, which seemed like the laziest sled dogs we’ve ever seen, they all wanted to just lie around and ignore everyone.  Then we watched the demo, which pretty much consisted of about 25 minutes of talk and about 5 minutes of demo.  Might have been somewhat more interesting if we hadn’t largely seen and heard all of this from other sources already, but since we had, we were both somewhat underwhelmed by it.

After the demo, so we could try to kill some more time, we decided to take the Horseshoe Lake trail.  Not too bad a hike, maybe 1.2 miles or so, although after the first .2 miles, it does lose about 200 feet of elevation.  Going back up not so much fun.  There was a group of rangers wandering around along the trail, apparently in the next year or two they’re going to work to make it a somewhat easier hike.  Coming back up the trail, the trail cross the railroad track.  I was a little ahead of Cathy at the time, and as I was crossing the track I head the crossing gates at the road just a little bit further down start making noises.  Cathy ended up getting stuck on the other side of the train for a while, which actually stopped right where the trail crosses the tracks (the Alaskan Rail Road seems to have a lot of switches that have to be manually operated, and I suspect that’s what they were doing).

From there it was back to the lodge to eat lunch, then wait until it was time to head to the rail depot to catch out train to Fairbanks.  They load you up on the shuttles at 3:15, you get to the depot at about 3:30, but then the train doesn’t arrive until about 4:00, so you do a lot of sitting around waiting.  While waiting, I couldn’t help but notice that it seemed like Royal Caribbean/Celebrity and Holland America both had better busses than Princess was using.  And for that matter, after having watched the earlier train go through, and the one we were waiting on arriving, their rail coached seemed slightly larger and better too.

The first 30 to 45 minutes of the 4 hours to Fairbanks is fairly scenic, running through the Healey canyon.  We spent most of that on the observation platform, which turned out to be at the back of the train.  After that, you end up with mostly flatter areas, largely almost swampish, just not quite as interesting, although we did barely see a couple of moose (well, I caught a glimpse of them, Cathy didn’t).

In Fairbanks, we found out that oddly we were, as far as I could tell, the only ones from our rail car to be getting on coach C, which was headed to the Fairbanks Princess Lodge.  Everyone else was headed to another lodge.  Gotta be honest, the Fairbanks Princess Lodge seems to not be quite as nice as their Denali property.  But then, I think we were also in a newer section of the Denali property, and there were sections of that one that didn’t look quite as nice either.  And oh joys, a room with a connecting door.  Thankfully we haven’t had problems with noise so far, but then, apparently they’re not quite full tonight, but will be full tomorrow.

Up early for the Tundra Wilderness Tour.  Before leaving, headed across the street to get some sandwiches from Subway for lunch, since I’d heard what they give you as a box lunch on the tour  (Some bread, reindeer sausage, cheese, a granola bar, and a bottle of water).  We managed to snag seats at the front of the bus, which was nice because we could see out the front window.

Our first sighting of the morning was a female moose near the side of the road munching on the bushes there.  Was a little tough to make out because she was somewhat behind some small trees too.  Then we saw some Dall Sheep, although those were largely just white dots way up the sides of the mountains.  Also saw some caribou, which were also a fair distance from the road.

Then, while we were in an area that was pretty well known for bears, we saw what the group at first thought were a couple of moose up the hill, somewhat hidden by a ridge.  Our guide thought it was an odd place for moose, and sure enough, after looking a little longer, it was actually a couple of grizzly bears, which we could largely only see the backs of.  Unfortunately, with where they were, there just wasn’t a way we were going to be able to see them, so somewhat disappointed, we journeyed on for a bit.  A little further down the road though, and we did much better.  A mother bear and her two cubs were on the hillside, in a
far better location to watch them.  We were able to watch these for a while, although they never really came close, but they were near enough to get a good view of.

Then we saw a golden eagle, perched out on the side of the hill in one spot.  Also a ways away, so not real easy to get a great view of.  Then, at a place we stopped, had a fox run by some of the people fairly close.  We didn’t happen to see it until it was further away, but still could see it well.  Shortly after getting back on the bus, another fox ran across the front of the bus.  This one was colored differently, with a lot of brown in the fur.

Finally, as we’re starting to get a chance to see the mountain Denali, it’s looking promising that it might actually be visible (which isn’t necessarily that common in the summer).  So we dash up to the viewpoint that’s best (which also happens to be our turnaround point) and sure enough, Denali is almost completely cloud free, and made for a great photo chance.

Didn’t really see much wildlife on the way back out, other than a couple of foxes (one of which might have been the same one we saw when we’d stopped earlier).  All in all, a decent tour, and most of that wildlife would not have been seen without upgrading from the Natural History Tour that Princess sells as the standard tour on this land package.  The TWT is long, but definitely a better choice.