Puerto Madryn in the distance as we pulled into port looked like a resort town:
Greeting our arrival into the port were Southern Giant Petrels
Southern giant petrel
We booked another wildlife excursion for Puerto Madryn to (hopefully) see dolphins and, yes, more sea lions. As with many of the other excursions we booked, the exact details were very fuzzy. We had talked to Luis in the excursions desk the day we boarded – there was concern about the very long walk to the end of the pier to get to the excursion boat. Luis said he would be there to get me some help.
Turns out there was a regular shuttle running between the dock and the end of the pier. Unfortunately, the shuttle driver was confused as to why we were taking the shuttle if we were on an excursion. Finally, Andy, said, “This is what they told us to do”, and we were able to take the shuttle to the end of the pier to meet up with the group.
I was a little concerned about the mechanics of climbing into the zodiac boat, but the walk on the beach to the boat was very short, and the crew helped me climb up the ladder and into the boat without a problem.
It was an absolutely glorious day! Low 70s, sunny, nary a cloud in the sky.
We rode out for a bit before arriving to a spot where we were likely to see dolphins. I always managed to be on the wrong side of the boat, but I was able to capture something of a dusky dolphine.
Dusky dolphin
We traveled to a different spot to see sea lions and cormorants
Guanay cormorants
Also visiting with us were a couple of snowy sheathbirds
And many sea lions.
We also saw jellyfish floating in the water. Our tour guide said these didn’t sting. You can just about make out the blobby white shape just under the water.
Back on the beach, I managed to climb down from the boat onto the sand without hurting myself!
On the dock was this monument.
Monument to the Diving Pioneers
Andy took a few minutes to run into a souvenir shop, but the stores were all closing early for New Years.
The dessert at dinner was baked Alaska, and also this fabulous chocolate macaron.
We didn’t participate in any of the ship’s New Years activities – we were both very tired, and I felt a cold coming on. I think I woke up long enough to see the countdown on the TV flip to 12:00.
Happy 2026!
Tomorrow: last day at sea.
January 2: Punta del Este, Uruguay – more sea lions!
Where We Start To Notice The Pattern Of Grizzlies On Display And We Get To See The “Sheldon Car”
Part 2 of Day 2
Yesterday’s lunch was literally nothing to write home about, but after lunch we wandered along the street and stumbled across the “2nd Street Gallery”: a mini mall with interesting shops and self-announced “musher museum”.
As is tradition, we couldn’t resist buying some art from a local artist – possibly these items will become trivets, though we’ll just figure that out when we get home.
We took the lift up to the second floor for the Musher’s Museum – except the museum was up another 7 steps that I declined to climb.
Andy went up and saw a couple of interesting things:
If you can read the sign that describes what this is, you’ve got sharp eyesA shout out to my sister (Irene) 😀
On the way out, I felt obligated to take this photo:
Hopefully not the only moose we see. Be great to see one that’s alive.
Unfortunately, Andy didn’t have his music with him, or he could have shown off his skills.
Also in this mini-mall was a Romanian/Moldovan restaurant. Considering out lunch experience was less than stellar, we decided to come back later to have dinner there.
At 3:00, we joined some of the people on our tour in the lobby for a meet and greet with our local tour guide, Jade, and the American Cruise Line representative, Andrew. They handed out our packets with info for the coming days, and explained how things will work for the next week. The goal is to replicate the ship environment while on land – after today, all our meals would be taken care of (a question we had). Everything sounded promising!
Around 6:00, we walked back across the street for dinner at the Romanian/Moldovan restuarant. Andy ordered a traditional Moldovan dish called Mamaliga and I had a beef rib with potatoes, carrots and pickles. They were both excellent and made up for the lackluster lunch.
Day 3
Today was “Getting To Know Fairbanks” day. Our original concerns about being shown the local Home Depot and McDonald’s blessedly did not happen (though apparently Fairbanks’ Home Depot and McDonald’s are the most northern in the US).
First we went to the Museum of the North, which had excellent exhibits of Alaska’s history, going back to pre-historic times.
This is Otto, the second display of a brown/grizzly bear.
This is a mammoth and not a mastodon
This is a settee made of dall sheep horn, caribou antler, and fake leather. I’m not sure if this looks comfortable or not. I’d be concerned about being poked by an antler.
Upstairs was an art gallery. One piece was a highly entertaining outhouse.
No guarantee of privacy even with the door closed.
We also watched an interesting 30 minute video on the Aurora Borealis. Apparently the Aurora season doesn’t start until mid-August when there’s enough actual darkness to see it.
Our next stop was lunch. Jade (our local guide) kept saying that they were taking us to the best restaurants that Fairbanks had to offer in an attempt to duplicate the ship experience, but somehow I got the impression that maybe this restaurant might not live up to that standard.
Andy enjoyed his roast beef dip sandwich, but my garden salad with chicken was fairly tasteless. The chocolate mousse pie was fabulous, though.
Next up was a close up and personal visit with the Alaska pipeline. This originally didn’t sound particularly interesting, but it turned out to be more impressive than I thought it would.
Apparently this is the traditional pose, akin to holding up the Tower of Pisa:
This section of the pipeline is above ground to avoid melting the permafrost.
This flower is called a fireweed. It has all of a two week season in the Alaskan summer, and we lucked out to be able to see it.
One more stop before heading back to the hotel was an antique car museum. Once again, it was more interesting than we thought it would be. All but 3 of the cars in the museum actually run and are driven upon occasion. All of these cars are impressive – some of the cars from the 1930s are HUGE (e.g. the Packard). My favorite car, though, was the “Sheldon Car”.
We know for a fact that we can’t possibly be related. Though we wondered whether changed his last name to Sheldon from something unusual as is the case with Andy’s dad.
A car built by Robert (Bobby) Sheldon at the turn of the 20th Century – he had never seen a car and had no idea what he was doing.
This guy was a big deal in the Alaska car community.
There was one car that people were allowed to and encouraged to climb into:
This was our last stop for the day. Dinner was at a restaurant about 15 minutes from the hotel. We both had the halibut, which was very good.
On the way back to the hotel for the night, we received our final instructions for packing up and leaving our luggage outside our door by 7:30 tomorrow morning.
Theoretically, we’ll have wifi in our Denali lodging, but as is tradition with national parks, cell service will probably be close to existent.
Tomorrow, the real adventure begins! Who knows – maybe we’ll be lucky and catch a glimpse of Denali in all its glory!
Where We Mostly Sat At Airports Or On Airplanes For 22 Hours
As is tradition, the first day of the current tradition is endless travel. To add to the fun this time, Alaska Air experienced a major IT network outage on July 20, grounding all of their planes for 3 hours.
And it probably would have made sense to check to see the status of our first flight on July 21, but we didn’t. So we got up at 4:30 a.m. to arrive at the airport by 7:45 a.m. for our 9:00 a.m. flight, to find out that our 9:00 a.m. flight was now 11:30.
Which turned out to be 12:15 p.m. The flight itself was a bit bumpy from all the storms in the atmosphere covering the eastern half of the US. It smoothed out a bit once we were over the western US. The pilot did their best to make up some of the time – the flight was 5 hours instead of 6 hours.
Fortunately, I had booked the two flights with an intentional 5 1/2 hour layover, so the 3 hour delay had no impact on our connecting flight at SeaTAC. When we walked off the plane, the Alaska Air app said our gate was D3. We had deplaned at gate N13. So we found our way to D3 – left-right-right-left-take a train-left-right-left – where we sat for a bit until we noticed the change to the departure time and the gate: now the flight was delayed an hour and the gate was N14, literally right where we had been when we landed!
So back we went. The N gates were a complete zoo. Nary an empty seat to be found and extremely noisy. We could not hear the announcements from the gate. Which is how we missed the start boarding announcement.
The second flight was a bit smoother than the first and we landed shortly after 10:00 p.m. Alaska Time.
An airport employee called our hotel to bring its shuttle to pick us up – something that the hotel’s website nor the cruise line mentioned.
We had booked a room for one night in this hotel, because it’s the same one where the land/cruise adventure will begin. This was the view from our window:
Our view of Fairbanks, AK. Notice how bright the sky was at 11:00 p.m.
In the morning (July 22), we checked out of the room and checked back in to the room assigned to us with the group. We have zero instructions as to what we’re supposed to do to find the group. Fortunately, the front desk staff was a little familiar with this drill. They suggested checking the common area around 3:00 p.m., which apparently is the typical time they are there.
The rest of today is a blank. Soon we’ll go to lunch and maybe we’ll check out the stores across the street.
Tomorrow: The Adventure Begins {whatever that means}
The official greeter at Fairbanks International Airport
Maryland Meshugas 