Vacation 2010 Part IX: End of a Vacation

Well, it was fun, but all vacations have to come to an end at some point, and this Alaskan Adventure was no different.

Ed was scheduled to fly out to Shanghai on the last day of our trip, so his last day with us was spent on the famous Kenai Fjord's National Park. On the way, we took a scenic route with hopes to see some wildlife like this bunny!

Unfortunately, that bunny was actually the only wildlife we saw on the scenic route. It was a bit of a disappointment, to say the least.

Kenai is actually most famous for its boat tours to see the glaciers up close. However, having come to Alaska on a cruise, Dad decided that we would not do that and instead we first visited the Aquatic Wildlife center, which houses this huge Sea Lion:


Following our brief visit to the Aquatic Wildlife center, we headed to one of the more famous sites in Kenai Fjords - the Exit Glacier.


The trip to the Exit Glacier was neat because all along the path, there are markers showing where the glacier's face stood at various points in history. The trail was probably a little over a mile long, showing how far the glacier had receded in just about 50 years!



The next day, we sent Ed off to the airport, while the rest of us headed to Anchorage Zoo. The zoo was a bit smaller than expected, but it had a good story. It was founded when a radio show in Alaska offered its winner a sum of cash, or a baby elephant, as a joke. The winner opted for the baby elephant, and, after scrambling to find and ship the elephant over to Alaska, the zoo was born.

Today, there are no more elephants at the Anchorage Zoo, but it is used more to showcase Alaskan wildlife now, such as this polar bear:



And, with that, our trip to the great northern state had come to an end!

Vacation 2010 Part VIII: We Got Wheels!

Denali National Park was incredible, but there was a huge downside to our stay at the park. As you may recall, we arrived at Denali by train, and didn't bother to rent a vehicle for our 3 nights there. For the most part, this was dandy - the park has a pretty reliable bus system that ferries you between the three major stations in the park, where you can take other buses to deeper areas, like we did on the way to Eielsen.

The problem was that the park buses stopped operating at 7PM! That meant that we had to be back from whatever we were doing by about 6:30PM, lest we miss the bus to the lodge. This sucked, because during the summer, the sun is out in Alaska until around midnight! So, we couldn't take advantage of all this daylight! Fortunately, this sort of worked out, because Cherry would be pretty tired by about 6 anyway, so we would just head to the lodge and relax in the hot tubs that overlook this fantastic view.


Alas, our stay in Denali was not to last forever. Soon, we were on a long bus ride back to Anchorage. On the way back, the driver stopped at another beautiful lodge to pick up some more passengers, whilst we took a short hike through one of the wooded trails in the back. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but one thing about Alaska that really caught me offguard is how green it is! It reminded me a bit of the bamboo scene from House of Flying Daggers!


After another several hours on the bus, we arrived back where we were a few days earlier, in Anchorage. This time, however, we were here to stay for a few more hours than last time (in fact we would stay overnight), so we took advantage of our complimentary Anchorage Museum tickets!

I don't have many photos from the Anchorage Museum because most of the exhibits were too dark to get good shots, but it is a pretty good institution, focusing primarily on the Native American heritage of the state. While interesting, we actually liked the science museum part more - there were a lot of cool exhibits, such as a slow-motion jump video recorder that records your jump with a high speed camera so that you can measure your hang time and just see how funny you look in the air.


After hanging out at the museum for a few hours, we finally got picked up by the rental car company guy, who took us to pick up our first taste of freedom in Alaska - a 2010 Toyota Sienna!

Our first trip was to the fishing town of Homer, but on the way, we saw this great field to romp in.


Plus, we got our first (of many) close glimpses of wild Bald Eagles!


As I mentioned earlier, Homer is largely a fishing town, with Halibut being the primary yield. Private fishermen are allotted a certain number of fish per day, and they certainly made good use of their limits! We saw a number of 100+ pound fish!




We got to eat some of that fish, too!



Up next, the finale of our Alaskan Adventure!

Vacation 2010 Part VII - Calls of the Wild

Denali National Park is one of the largest national parks in the country. As such, there is a staggering number of activities available to park patrons. Among the more popular activities are taking flights up to the snowy mountain itself, rafting the glacial runoff rapids, and riding dogsleds!

Unfortunately, we didn't do any of those activities... they are all pretty expensive - and sadly, that's not how we roll! Someday...

However, we still did one of the best budget activities available - the Eielsen Bus Tour of the interior of the park! The great photo above, believe it or not, was taken from the bus! We were quite lucky to be able to get such a great shot - most days, the cloud cover is so thick that Mt. McKinley isn't even visible!

The awesome thing about the bus tour is that it probably provides the most wildlife viewing opportunities of any activity available at Denali National Park. The reason for this is because it is one of the longest duration activities in the park, and also because it covers a heck of a lot of ground. On the tour, you visit both highlands and tundra, so you have chances to see the wildlife that reside in both of these types of environments, like this fox we saw next to the lodge:

The most common animal seen in Denali National Park (and much of the rest of Alaska, for that matter) is Moose. They often walk right alongside the road, so we were able to get several great close up shots of moose!

The second most common animal sighting is Caribou:

 

Believe it or not, the third most commonly seen animal is bear! But we usually only saw bear from a pretty good distance... I think we augmented this shot with a binocular lens...

Alaska has all the major types of bears found in North America - Black bears to the south, Polar bears to the north (but Denali is not north enough to see Polar bears), and Brown bears like the one above. However, we got to see the elusive Pink bear next to our bus!

Oh... that's not a bear, that's just a preggers Cherry!

There were also a lot of Dall's Sheep, but these were waaaay up in the mountains so they look mostly like little grains of rice:

 

One of the cuter animals you can see are the little ground squirrels:

We were also very lucky to see some of the Denali National Park wolf pack!

But the big winner of the day was by far this Lynx! The bus driver said it was the first Lynx she had seen all year! This guy just decided to walk across the street and chill out by the bridge for a few minutes, so we were able to get some truly awesome shots!

So, if you are ever up in Denali National Park and aren't up for flying up to the mountain in a helicopter, make sure you don't miss this great budget wildlife viewing option!

Vacation 2010 Part VI - Dog Days

Sofia is taking a good long beauty rest, so it's as good a time as any to try to catch up a little bit on the travelogues!

Our first day in Denali National Park started with some $12 dollar footlongs from the local Subway restaurant:

Then, we were off to hit some of the popular nearby outposts in the park, such as this trail to Horseshoe Lake, where hikers can find a large beaver's dam!

The main activity of the day, however, was a trip to the Sled Dog center of the park. In the wintertime, the rangers actually use dog sleds to patrol around the park, keeping an eye out for some of the endangered animals and policing poachers. This center is where the park keeps and trains the dogs!

Having read a couple of Jack London's novels about life in the Yukon, I somewhat envisioned all of the dogs to look like the one above - a powerful Husky with a beautiful black and white fur coat. But alas, most of the dogs were smaller than expected - but nonetheless they were very eager and very capable of pulling a large sled like this one:

After the dog demonstration, we headed to another trail to hike before turning in for the evening. As with most hikes in Alaska, you are always bound to find a few interesting specimens of wildlife!

Vacation 2010 Part V - Denali Zai Na Li?

Due to the inexplicably complex logistical scheme my dad came up with, we were only able to stay in Anchorage for one night before heading on to our next stop, Denali National Park. Bonus points if you can figure out the little inside joke in the title!

Denali National Park is the national park formerly known as Mount McKinley National Park, named of course for the tallest peak in North America. The name of the park changed to Denali in 1980 to pay respects to the name the Athabaskan people gave to the mountain, which means, appropriately, "The Big One".

Our trip to Denali would start off from Anchorage on the McKinley Express Tour Train:



This train takes about eight hours to take you from Anchorage to the outer edge of Denali National Park. The route is quite scenic, taking you across narrow bridges over deep ravines and through several small Alaskan towns, including the town of Wasilla, where one former governor Sarah Palin hails from! It even rolls by a military air base, stocked with a fleet of F-22 Raptors!


Being an 8-hour train ride, you're certain to get quite hungry. Fortunately, the train operators did not miss this opportunity to gouge the train riders, as the glass-top train also has several dining cars, complete with a full catering menu:


Before long, we had arrived at our destination in the outskirts of Denali National Park, where tourists that did not opt to camp in the park grounds itself can stay at one of the fabulous (and relatively inexpensive) tourist resorts in the mountains! We stayed at the one associated with our cruise line, the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. Each room is in a beautiful log cabin inspired building and comes with a view overlooking the woods about the resort. The rooms are adequately equipped with beds and showers, but amenities include free Wi-fi in the lobby, shuttles into and out of the park, and hot tubs overlooking gorgeous mountain views.


The Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge and the nearby shops would serve as our home base for the next several days during our stay in Denali National Park. Among the shops included the home of the $12 dollar footlong - a Subway restaurant!

Vacation 2010 Part IV: Glaciers and Landfall

The last several days of the cruise were spent completely on the seas with prime opportunities for glacier viewing. The primary sites we stopped at were Glacier Bay and College Fjords - two long stretches of water between the North American continent and various ice-capped islands.

Glacier Bay also afforded us the first major National Park Junior Ranger opportunities. Sure, we had gotten some stamps for our National Park passports during our travels through the Tongass National Forest whilst on the cruise, but this was our first real chance to get the coveted Junior Ranger Badge here in Alaska. Since Alaska has among the highest number of National Parks in the United States, we would get several more chances later, but Glacier Bay was unique not only because it was our first Alaskan badge, but also because this was the first National Park we'd been to where the park office actually came to us! That's right, early in the morning, several park rangers from Glacier Bay National Park actually boarded our ship, the Beautiful Diamond Princess, to guide us as we floated by the mighty glaciers.


We also got to see glaciers "calving", which is when pieces of the glacier break off the main mountain of ice. Calving is a pretty impressive spectacle - both for the eyes and for the ears. You can hear the ice cracking and see huge chunks of glacier crashing into the water below. The blue color of the glaciers, I'm told, is due to the intense density of the ice - compressed so much that only blue light is able to be seen.


Early the next day (the last full day of the cruise), we headed on our way to College Fjords, another set of glaciers. But first, the head chef and the Maitre'd of the ship put on a fun cooking show and gave a tour of the galley of the ship, where over 3000 crew and passengers are served multiple meals a day, every day!




After the tour, we played a little mini golf in the upper deck:


Finally, we arrived at Glacier Bay to take our final shots with the ocean dwelling glaciers before we headed inland in Alaska.


With that, after seven days at sea, our cruise had come to an end. We made landfall in the great Alaskan city of Whittier (which has a population of just triple digits but is home to a hotel and a Chinese restaurant) and made our way towards the largest city in Alaska - Anchorage.

Vacation 2010 Part III - The Inner Passage

After a day at sea, we headed to the so-called Inner Passage - essentially a long stretch of sea between Canada and the Pacific Ocean consisting of several islands, the cities of Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and Sitka, and one of the world's last remaining temperate rainforests, the giant Tongass National Forest. Our first stop, Alaska's oldest city, the Salmon Capital of the World, Ketchikan.

We only had a couple of hours here though, so we scrambled to try to see a couple of things. Here was the first place we observed the booming seaplane industry of Alaska - outside of oil, Alaska's economy depends largely on its tourism, and arguably the most profitable tourist activity (which, regrettably, we never got to do in our stay in Alaska) is taking a seaplane up to see the glaciers above.

We also took a stroll to the Totem center - Alaska is also quite famous for its rich native culture, being home to the Inuits, Aleuts, and the populous Tlingit.


However, rushed as we were, we didn't get a chance to properly explore the totem center, either!
Shortly after, we were on the boat again, on the way to the state capital, the elusive city of Juneau. Juneau is the fourth largest city in Alaska, but you couldn't hardly tell by looking at it. It's also afflicted with an incredibly rainy season, much like the rest of its inner passage brethren. Interestingly, Juneau has a single highway that stretches about 20 some odd miles across the city but features not one, but two dead ends. In fact, Juneau is only accessible by sea and by air, with no roads leading to it!


Aside from being the state capital, Juneau also is situated near the famous Mendenhall Glacier, a glacier that you can get right up close and personal to, with not much of a walk. It would be the first of many of Alaska's great blue glaciers that we would experience!



After returning from the glacier, we rode the cable car up to another mountain park, operated by the local Tlingit tribe. At the top, we got to take another short trail and see some pretty nice views of Juneau and see our first bald eagle up close! Granted, it was a captive eagle, but we don't get to see bald eagle's up close all that often (despite the fact that Florida actually has a pretty large bald eagle population)!




We also ran into some fellow Melbournians in Juneau. Aside from getting several "Go Gators" hollers throughout our trip (the Gator Nation really is everywhere!), who'd have thought we'd meet up with folks from little ol' Melbourne?


Our last stop in the Inner Passage was the gold mining town of Skagway. This little town really had an old-school flavor to it - it looks just like an old mining town in the 1800s should look like!


Despite its history as a booming mining town, Skagway today has virtually no local population, existing almost entirely due to tourism. In fact, they never really did find any gold in Skagway to begin with, so one could say that Skagway has always been home to exclusively outsiders looking for an adventure!

Cherry started feeling a bit of fatigue, so we headed back shortly after eating some excellent Dungeness crab:


That night was a special night on the Beautiful Diamond Princess. It was the night where the crew members, instead of the professional performers, could showcase their talents on stage! After some chaotic balloons, we saw some truly impressive, and some outrageous, performances by the international crew! The highlight of the show, by far, was this Filipino singer, who sang a male/female duet, all by his lonesome!




Next time, up, Glacier Bay and our farewell to the Beautiful Diamond Princess!