denali national park

 

We spent the day yesterday making the deceptively long drive from Anchorage to Healy, our base for the end of vacation and our visit to Denali National Park. I say "deceptively" long because Google Maps says it should only take about 4 hours to make the drive, but it took us all freaking day. We packed up our rental house in Anchorage and were on the road by about 10 a.m., then we made a few stops at some pretty lakes recommended by the people of the internet. They were lovely, but probably we should have just stuck to the main road because these detours really added a lot of time.

We also stopped in Palmer, where there is a working musk ox farm. We took a very brief tour and saw a baby musk ox with her mom. It was interesting and pretty informative! Musk oxen are raised for their hair, which makes a very soft yarn, and I had this idea that maybe I would buy some as a souvenir, but it turns out that even the tiniest twist of it is like $65 so that idea went out the window fairly quickly.

We stopped for lunch in Talkeetna, which is where a lot of the flightseeing tours of Denali are based. While we were eating our burgers (bison for me!), I briefly looked up just how much that would cost, and yeah, there's a reason why we didn't plan it in advance. ($1,000 ... per person. gulp.)

Anyway, Denali. The park has one road (named Park Road) that is 90-ish miles long. Only the first 15 miles of that road are paved, so that's all you can see of this massive park if you're in a regular car. The rest of the road is gravel, and only park-designated buses are allowed on it. HOWEVER, as of this year, the road is closed at mile 42 because of what they're calling a landslide. And by "landslide," what they mean is that it turns out that it's not such a great idea to build a precarious gravel road on top of a glacier if there's a chance that glacier might eventually melt from underneath the road. Whoops. So now the road is closed past mile 42 for the foreseeable future, and it seems like it might be a while because they're having trouble even getting contractors to bid on the project since it's so remote. 

this is what happens when you
hand your camera off to a bozo

"What do you mean they built a road
on top of a GLACIER?"

There are different tours of the park, narrated and not narrated, but we chose the transit bus, which is the cheapest option at about $30 per person. Our tour wasn't officially "narrated," but the driver did have a microphone and spent most of the four-hour round trip talking about the history of the park and explaining points of interest. We did see a lot of interesting landscape, although not Denali itself, because wildfires in other parts of the state made the sky hazy enough to obscure our view. We also saw two caribou (I got the caribou points on the first one!) and a mama moose with calf. Supposedly another bus saw a bear, but it was too far away and none of the people on our bus could see it.

caribou

mama moose

and baby

arctic ground squirrel

there's a bear out there ... sure

ok but there actually is a caribou here

this type of waterway is called a braided river. neat!

Friends, I'm not going to lie: this park was a little bit of a letdown for me. Maybe it was that I felt like the sheer effort involved in getting there should have had a bigger payoff. Maybe I just don't like sitting in a school bus for hours on end now that I'm well past school age. Maybe we were just tired after a very long week. Whatever the reason, the whole day felt a little anticlimactic.

Back at the hotel, Mike and Max did a little research and decided to take a hike on their own. They did a loop around a lake and saw a beaver dam and lodge, and they were sweaty and happy when they rejoined us at the hotel for dinner.

Tomorrow we head back to Anchorage for our flight out. It's going to be a VERY long day. We drive to Anchorage, then our flight leaves at 10:20 p.m. and we land in Chicago Saturday morning. I'm already anticipating the need for about three days straight in bed once we finally get home.

It's been pretty awesome, Alaska. Thanks for having us!

girdwood

 Time to explore an old gold mining town!

We slept in a little because I think we're all starting to drag a little from the exertions of the past few days, then we headed back down the Seward Highway to Girdwood, an old-timey mining town. Our first stop was the Crow Creek Mine, where Liam wanted to pan for gold. It's a really really pretty place. We paid the good people and got our demonstration of gold panning techniques, then we hiked down the trail to the creek. I was a little put out because nobody told me there would be hiking (for me) on this excursion, but I got over it when we reached the creek, which was downright spectacular. There was one other group there when we arrived, but they left pretty quickly, and then we had the place to ourselves. More precisely, we shared it with a million Alaskan mosquitoes, which are freaking mutants. I had my hood pulled up and my sleeves all bunched up over my hands, but I still manage to collect a few bites. I can only imagine how badly the boys got eaten because they were all wearing shorts.

After much panning and one soaked tennis shoe (Henry), we came up with a grand total of 18 gold flakes in little vials of water. Not much physical reward for the monetary outlay, but hopefully the memory of panning for gold at an Alaskan mine will be worth it for them.

Once we were finished at the mine, we continued on to the main attraction for the day: Mount Alyeska. There's a ski resort at the base of the mountain, and in the summer the main draw is the tram up the mountain. Henry and I bought tram tickets and headed up, while Mike, Liam, and Max opted to get to the top the hard way: by climbing a very steep trail that zigzagged up the mountainside. Henry and I got to the top within 5 minutes, then bought some ridiculously overpriced lunch ($15 for four chicken nuggets! I never!) and waited an excessively long time for it to be ready, but at least we had a nice view. 

let's not even talk about how
expensive this root beer was

Shortly after we finished our lunch, Mike and the older boys made it to the top (about an hour and 45 minutes total for them). Max came skipping up without a care in the world, a little sweaty but totally exhilarated. Liam and Mike came staggering up after him, drenched in sweat and visibly exhausted. The boys ate some bison chili while Mike and I watched the cliff swallows diving and swooping, then we all got on the tram for the ride back down.

Max sent this from the trail

actually happy to be climbing a mountain

And that's when things started to go wrong for poor Liam, who got a migraine. We stopped right away and got him some Tylenol, but we weren't able to head it off, so he was pretty miserable. His normal protocol is to take the Tylenol, and if that doesn't work, to take his stronger prescription medicine an hour later. So while we waited for the medicine to work, we stopped along the drive home to witness one last amazing Alaskan site for the day: the bore tide coming in. This happens when the low tide is really low and the high tide is really high, and it all comes rushing in in one big wave. There were surfers waiting and people lined up all along all the pull-offs because this one was among the higher ones. Mike and I got out just as it was coming in and got to watch. Nature is so cool, y'all.

Anyway, we made it back to our rental house when Liam's hour was up, and he was noticeably worse. Luckily for him, I had brought his migraine medicine. It's been a good while since he had one, so it wasn't really on my radar, but as we were getting ready to walk out the door in Plymouth, I happened to open the drawer where we keep it, and it caught my eye so I grabbed it just in case. Which turned out to be a very good thing because he was in bad shape for a while until he managed to keep some of the medicine down and sleep it off a little.

While Liam slept, we got pizza (it was pretty good!) for dinner and just puttered around doing laundry and cleaning up for the night. There were no more earthquakes, and I went to bed sometime around 10. I woke up a few hours later and heard Liam out in the kitchen getting some pizza because he was feeling better. This morning, he is fully recovered, just in time for us to pack up and leave the rental house for more northerly locales. 

kenai fjords national park

We originally planned to take the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Seward, take the 6-hour boat tour of Kenai Fjords, then take the train back to Anchorage. Luckily, we realized in time what a VERY LONG day that would create, so we adjusted the plan.

dispatch from the train

Instead, Liam and Max took the train to Seward, while Mike, Henry, and I drove there. The boys report that the train trip was interesting. They saw a couple moose and some Dall sheep, along with the amazing scenery of southeastern Alaska. Meanwhile, in the car, we also saw a moose and a whole herd of Dall sheep, but we were able to stop along the way and take pictures. The train ride took the boys 4 hours, but the drive along the Seward highway only took 2.5 hours, so after we dropped them off at the depot, we took our time getting to Seward and had plenty of time to wander around and shop for souvenirs.

black-billed magpie

But that's not really what you care about, right? No? Us either. 

During the boat tour, we saw THREE different kinds of whales (multiple humpbacks, a minke whale, and a fin whale, the latter of which are apparently kind of rare). We saw porpoises and seals and sea lions. And best of all, we saw plenty of puffins! Not even just one variety -- we saw both horned and tufted puffins! This was amazing for me especially, since we had booked a puffin tour in Maine last year but it got canceled because of rain/fog. I was so bummed. But now my puffin dreams have come true.

harbor seal, pretty far from the harbor

horned puffin

this is where they nest

bald eagle

humpback whale, a sequence

one of these things is not like the others.
or two of them, if you want to be picky, MIKE.

tufted puffin

on "the beehive," a wall full of birds

and the sky directly above, also full of birds

stellar sea lions

kinda looks like Maine here

Oh! And we got up close and personal with a couple of tidewater glaciers. We got to watch them calving. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.

But listen, six hours is a really long time, and Mike and I were standing outdoors taking pictures for most of that time. We were cold, and our legs were really tired from making constant adjustments to keep our balance on the ship. The boys joined us outside for brief periods, then would retreat indoors to warm up and eat some snacks. While we were by the glaciers, one of the crew members went "ice fishing" -- that is, she picked up a chunk of glacier ice from the waters of the fjord. They used that ice to make drinks that they then sold for a "reasonable" price. The boys each got one of the nonalcoholic drinks (basically a virgin tequila sunrise), but none of them were big fans of it. The faces they made during the tasting were worth the cost though.

After the tour, we went to dinner at the Crab Shack in downtown Seward. Liam, Henry, and I all got fish and chips (delicious!), and Max got a shrimp basket. Mike, meanwhile, decided to go all in and got the king crab, the price of which I am documenting here for posterity because you don't go into a place where they have rolls of paper towels on the tables, cracked linoleum, and plastic cutlery ... and expect to pay $99 for a single crab leg and two tiny ears of corn. But sometimes you've just got to shell out (heh) to get a taste of the local delicacies, so that's just what we did. I tried a bite of his crab, and it was very good indeed. Also I guess I didn't realize just how freaking big king crabs are, because that was one hell of a single crab leg!

The drive home was pretty quiet, with most of us (happily not Mike!) dozing in the car. And once we got back and got settled in at our rental house, Mike and I looked at some of the day's pictures, then I realized how late it was (again, what is time?) so I headed off to bed. Liam and Max were in bed too, and Mike and Henry were still awake ... WHEN THE EARTHQUAKE STRUCK.

No, this is not hyperbole. There was an actual earthquake, and it woke me up from sleep (I thought Mike had banged really hard into the bed in our very cramped room). It scared the crap out of Henry, since this was his first earthquake experience. USGS says it was a 4.7 quake, pretty close to us.

And that's not all! It turns out that there was an earlier quake too, while we were driving home. We didn't feel it because we were in the car, but it was closer to Seward, and it was a 4.3. 

Hopefully these aren't harbingers of a bigger quake, but just Alaska showing off for us. And listen, Alaska, we get it: You are large and powerful and absolutely BRIMMING with natural wonders. We are in awe of your greatness, and we require no further demonstrations that you can actually shake the earth.