Amy & Andy Excellent Adventure 2025 Alaska Revisited Edition: Day 6 (July 26) – DENALI!!

Where We Saw Denali In All Its Glory Not Once, But Several Times

Spent A Few Hours On A Scenic Train Ride

And Finally Arrived In Anchorage

Denali

I’m trying an experiment with this post – deliberately adding a cover photo. I’ll see if it works.To

We knew today was going to be a busy, busy day.

It started off with our helicopter excursion that we had postponed from Friday afternoon, because we thought it was going to rain. It didn’t rain Friday afternoon, but it also was not raining on Saturday morning. A good omen.

We were picked up by the helicopter excursion company and driven over to the launch site. We had to sit through a 15 minute safety video and then be fitted with glacier boots. To say that the glacier boots felt odd is an understatement.

The next issue was climbing into the helicopter. There was one giant step up onto the step on the landing skid. Then there was the even bigger gap into the machine itself. With help from one of the other passengers (Mike) and Andy, it was a ONE-TWO-THREE UP!! maneuver and I was in. The additional challenge was that we were doing a “hot turn” – we were boarding the helicopter while it was still running. The wind from the spinning blades literally sucked the air from my lungs as I was helped on board – I was still gasping for air for another few minutes.

Stunning scenery along the way for about 25 minutes:

A glacier. There’s a lot of them around here.

We landed next to a large pool of glacier water.

Andy and our other two passengers walked down to the pool’s edge. It was a bit too step for me, so I just toddled around on the glacier near the helicopter.

These are frozen air bubbles in the ice. Those are my feet.

Here’s Andy drinking the cold, pure glacial water.

This is for perspective – the relative size of 3 teensy people next to the glacial pool

After about 20 minutes, it was time to head back. This time, because the engine was off, it was easier to tell Mike and Andy exactly what to do and when. A few more tries and I’ll have this down to a science!

On the way back were more spectacular views:

This is the beginning of a glacial river

But the most spectacular of all, was this –

Denali – view of 100% of the mountain (including the parts usually hidden from view on the ground) and 100% clear skies

It’s said that 30% of visitors get to see some piece of Denali – this view is in the 10% range. Our pilot was being a bit of a pain – we were all asking him to confirm it was Denali, because it didn’t really look like any photo I’ve seen. Finally, I asked: WHAT IS THAT GIAN WHITE MOUNTAIN. And he finally replied, “Well, some people call it Mt McKinley”.

Bucket list item checked! We can go home now!

Once we landed back where we started and returned our glacier boots, we were driven into “the canyon” – downtown Denali – where we met up with the rest of the group.

Our guide, Jade, herded us all to the coach that took us to the train depot for the Wilderness Express. We spent the next 5 1/2 hours driving through scenic Alaska until we arrived in Talkeetna.

And then Denali popped up again, and the rest of our group joined the “30% club”.

Hurricane Creek on the left and Denali on the right

During lunch, the train crew talked about a mixed drink called “The Grizzley” – kalua, vodka, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and a couple of other things I’m not remembering. It was tasty,

We did not spend any time at all in Talkeetna – we went from the train immediately to the bus. We drove another hour or so until the dinner stop, and then back on the bus for another hour or so until we finally arrived in Anchorage.

What a long day. The next three nights we will be hopping back and forth between Anchorage and Seward.

View from our window in Anchorage at 10:00 p.m.

Tomorrow (Day 6): Seward and Kenai Fjords National Park

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2025 – Alaska Revisited Edition (Day 5): Denali Day!

Where We Get Up At O’Dark Thirty (Only It Isn’t Dark)

And Play “I Spy With My Little Eye” With Grizzly Bears and Caribou.

And A Random Squirrel

We were up at 4:30 a.m. in order to have breakfast at 5:00 a.m. and be ready to board the Denali tour bus at 6:00 a.m.

Our lodge at 5:30 a.m. Not exactly dark.

We boarded the modified school bus that serves as the tour buses in Denali park. Private cars are not allowed in the park, except for specific circumstances.

It was all so, so beautiful!

We did luck out early with spotting wildlife – our driver, Jason, spotted Dall sheep. I know I saw the little white dots that were moving around on the mountainside.

There’s a couple of teeny white dots in the middle of this photo. They could be Dall Sheep or they could be rocks. Your guess is as good as mine.

And then we saw caribou. I had better luck with this.

And eventually we hit the jackpot and saw a mama bear and her two yearling cubs!

Eventually it was time to turn around and come back. Here are some photos that other people in our group were able to snap:

A Willow Ptarmigan, the Alaska State bird

An Arctic Ground Squirrel, which can lower it’s core body temp to 27F during hibernation

I snapped this one myself:

Arctic fox – it was walking away from us with its kill in its mouth

Endless beautiful vistas

We were only missing a moose, but that was not meant to be. We considered this a successful Denali Day!

We were back at the hotel before noon, and then off to lunch.

This afternoon is at leisure. The next two days are a bit crazy. We have a helicopter excursion tomorrow morning, followed by a scenic train ride (to Talkaneetka? From Talkaneetka? Not sure. But then we are on to Anchorage.

Tomorrow: Not planes, trains, and automobiles, but copters, trains, and buses.

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2025 Alaska Revisited Edition – Day 4 (July 24): On Our Way To Denali

Where We Take Our Time Getting To Denali National Park, But Finally Actually Do Get There

And As Is Tradition – A Bathroom Situation

Our local guide, Jade, has mentioned several times that there are only two seasons in Alaska: Winter and Construction.

With that in mind, we left a little earlier than the day before to allow for random construction traffic. And indeed, we were stuck in construction traffic a couple of times.

The scenery was very dramatic along the way:

We had one stop before arriving in Denali – in Nenana, AK.

If you are new to my blog, there is always at least one incident during any given adventure when the bathroom break becomes an issue. And so….

It was only going to be for 10 minutes and then we’d have our promised bathroom break, but it turned out to be a whole presentation on the Nenana Ice Classic. Mind you, we had been on the road for a good couple of hours up until this point.

The Nenana Ice Classic is apparently something that Alaskans do in late winter to entertain themselves. This event has been an annual event for 100 years. Each year people from all over Alaska buy (basically) raffle tickets for a pool to guess when the ice will break completely and the river flows freely in the spring. Proceeds from this event go to assorted charities for the disadvantaged in Alaska.

Everything about this event is “old school” – printed raffle tickets, manual tracking of all the purchased tickets, manual notification to the winner, etc. – including using a 30 year old computer system.

The “tripod” is that black and white structure on the left.

The “tripod” (which is not a tripod, because it has 5 legs, but whatever) is secured into the river ice sometime in March. The tripod is connected (via rope? wire? string?) to two clocks (the primary and the backup).

As the ice thaws and the tripod begins drift, it tugs on the string. When the tripod pulls so hard on the string that the string breaks – the clock stops documenting the exact time the river is flowing freely. The winner is determined as to who had the closest time (on either side). The earliest recorded date was April 19 and the latest was May 30. The most common dates were the middle two weeks of May.

We bought two tickets for $3.00 each. I picked 05/05/2026 at 5:00 a.m.

Now it was well past the promised 10 minutes. There was an exodus towards the old train depo for the bathrooms. By the time I got there, the line for the ladie’s room was very long. Since each bathroom was single occupancy, and the men had long since cycled through their turn, at some point the women took over the men’s room to speed things up.

We continued on to lunch, and then on to Denali National Park.

More views from along the way. It just doesn’t get old.

Our motley crew. Our local guide, Jade, is on the far left with the lollipop. Our American Cruise Line rep (Andrew) is the last person on the right in the very back row

We stopped at the visitor center (I still call them ranger stations), where we got our national park passports stamped, and we watched two movies. The first one was just music showing pretty scenes of the park. What a good nap.

The second one was about the National Park dog teams – that was much more interesting. We managed to stay awake for the whole thing.

We were dropped off at our room at the Denali Bluffs lodge, just long enough to drop off stuff and get back on the bus to go to dinner, which was at a dinner theater called The Alaska Cabin Nite Dinner Theater. It was a lot of fun!

Tomorrow: Our 5 1/2 hour drive through Denali National Park.

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2025 – Alaska Revisited Edition: End of Day 2 + Day 3 (July 22 and 23)

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 eyes

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 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!