Saturday, August 13, 2016
Photos
I really should have gone to bed earlier. It is as hot as a
fart in our room. The guest directory says every room is equipped with heat and
a ceiling fan. Ours doesn’t have a ceiling fan and we don’t need heat. We have
the window open so we have the relaxing roar of the Nenana River right out our
window (which we can just see through the trees). But the prevailing breeze
comes from the other direction. There is a desk fan in our room but it’s neck
is broken so it is unstable and not much use. Clay was up before 4am and
rousted me. I have now had about one whole night’s sleep over the past 3
nights! Given the food situation here at Denali Park Village, we bought
breakfast last night at a gas station convenience store in Healy since we
couldn’t find the promised grocery store. We bought a yogurt, a banana and an
apple plus a Coke Zero. Nothing had prices on it and it came to $7.02. The
cashier didn’t give Clay a receipt. He told me everything costs $2! Not really,
we don’t know. He had a cinnamon bun he had brought from the Super 8 and I had
a pack of Delta cookies from the flights. It was a good start with coffee made
in the room. There are no safes or refrigerators in the Denali Park Village
rooms, but each building has an ice machine or is said to anyway. Ours does.
Clay filled the plastic bag from the groceries with, according to him $10 worth
of, ice and we put our purchases from last night on ice on the shower floor overnight.
It was nice and cold this morning! No fuss, no muss.
It did get dark overnight. It was overcast and rained
overnight, so though the hotel’s staff were touting the meteor shower and
aurora overnight, I doubt anyone saw much. It didn’t look like a promising day
as we headed out to our bus pickup point in front of the Lodge at 5:45am. I guess I didn’t tell about our cab driver in
Anchorage and his ride-long rant about one day of sunshine out of the last 20
days. 19 days of a LOT of rain! Everyone that lives here has been talking about
how wet it is, how full the rivers, etc. We were not hopeful. As we waited
outside the Lodge, where we the first to arrive and start a line, I began to
remember why we had picked Denali Park Village! Clay had picked the tour for
reasons still unknown, but I had read online about the mad dash for the front
seat on the NPS tour buses and as we saw them, I remembered. Kantishna
Roadhouse tour picked up first at Denali Park Village and you had the least
competition and best chance of a front seat. Since the people behind us in line
were honoring that we were there first I had a good feeling. Even as I had a
bad feeling when the bus arrived much later than expected. A group of late
arrivals that never joined the queue rushed out to the bus as it arrived and
we’d have been last, but she waved them off and drove to our side of the Lodge
and our line remained honored by what turned out to be a good sized contingent
of Europeans and Clay and I got on the bus first and had the front passenger
side. This made a good tour and day, great. The people who were right behind us
in line filled in beside and behind us and the rushers got seats behind all of
the queuers! We drove to the Grande and then Princess, so they filled the
middle and back of the bus and that made us 43 people. 1 shy of a full bus. The
tour operated 2 buses that day according to our guide who was filling in for
one day as a favor to a personal friend. It was still an NPS-style like a
school bus but I think the seats were a bit better. There was overhead stowage.
I will cut to the chase and highly recommend the tour for first time visitors
with limited time and a desire for a complete Denali experience instead of a
quick glimpse. It is operated by Doyon/Aramark so it is mostly operated by the
owners of the Kantishna Roadhouse at the terminus of the only road in Denali
National Park. It is private property at the end of a 92-mile road through the
park. I think it was an excellent tour for people like us, first time visitors.
Our driver, Linda was excellent. She told us that for the last 2 weeks or so
that the park road between Eielson and Kantisha was closed as it had been
washed out/partially collapsed by a mud slide during the past month’s heavy
rains. She said the guests and workers out there at the 3 lodges at the far end
were stranded until this past Tuesday. She told us we were lucky we hadn’t come
a week earlier! That portion of the road was hanging hundreds of feet above the
river bed below and hundreds of feet of future mud and rock above and it was a
2-way, 1-lane gravel road! It was terrifying! She was a great drier, and animal
spotter and stopped the bus for them. We noticed that even the NPS shuttle
buses stopped for wildlife sightings as well though! She gave us chocolate chip
cookies in the morning, again in the afternoon as well as apples and oranges.
(And we have some idea what fruit costs here!) We had about 2 hours at the
Kantishna Roadhouse before starting back out. We had an included lunch of a
minestrone soup, a turkey wrap and a chocolate chip cookie with water, tea, or
pink lemonade. You could buy other drinks. Everyone could do an include activity
after lunch. A sled dog demo, or a gold panning one or a chair massage. (Clay
thought the massage had an extra charge, but I understood it was just one of
the choices.) I don’t know that we realized when we booked all that was
included, but if we did know we had forgotten! I picked gold panning for us since we’d had a
good dog sledding experience in Churchill, Canada. They fitted us all with
rubber boats and a special black plastic bowl with ridges and a ‘poke’ full of
Eureka Creek dirt to pan. We just had rocks and dirt making lumpy mud to swish
around and it was more tedious and less fun than you’d think. Oh, I forgot to
say that the sun had come out brilliantly over the course of the day and there
were blue skies. And while we never actually saw all of Denali, we saw the top
to the bottom at various times throughout the day. It was blazing hot sunshine
as we stood in the cold rushing of Moose Creek washing the Eureka Creek dirt!
We chucked our rocks and turned in our boots and bowls and watched the last
half of the sled dogs. They were much more robust dogs that those we’d seen at
the Iditarod HQ! The rest of the afternoon was a back track. We saw a lot of
moose and caribou today, but sadly not a single grizzly bear! We learned that
caribou and reindeer are actually the same animal. They eat a lot of reindeer
sausage around here, but we’ve avoided it! It is illegal to own or sell
caribou, but legal for reindeer. Go figure. Both inbound and outbound, we
passed a volunteer exercising a canine ranger! When the park road is closed
from September to May only non-motorized entry is available and that includes
to the park rangers. All transportation has to be basically by foot,
cross-country skis, snow shoes or dog sleds. They have kept working Alaskan
sled dogs there since 1917! Canine Ranger Andi gave birth to a new litter in
July. They do 3 sled dog demonstrations at day and we may try to return in the
morning. I love the idea of a century of canine rangers!
We got back to the hotel as the last drop off around 8pm. It
was a long but good day. It has made the last 2 days all worthwhile! We had
noticed a hand painted sign out on the road across the street from Denali Park
Village. It said Thai Food. We drove over there to see about dinner. It was an
orange trailer identical to the one in Healy last night that was so busy. We
almost went there in Healy, but I balked because I don’t like all that coconut
milk and lemongrass. It wasn’t like that or mine wasn’t. I had a noodle dish with
chicken that was delicious that was under $10. Clay had a chicken stir fry for
$12 that was heavy with coconut milk, but he really liked it. They had a liquor
store on this side of the street too. There was a lot of foot traffic that we
observed of Denali Park Village people walking over for alcohol and Thai to
carry back over to have at Denali Park Village. We didn’t see any alcohol for
sale on our side of the street except in the Lodge at high prices. That
explains the foot traffic. I can only recommend Denali Park Village if you need
a good seat on the Kantishna Roadhouse tour bus!
Tomorrow we check out and head back south. We have another
chance for a different, southern view of Denali before heading back to
Anchorage and boarding Crystal Serenity for our big North West Passage cruise.
We’re ready for some rest, relaxation and a long stretch of sea days and naps!
Photos
