Trips – Page 31 – Kevin's America

McKinley Princess Lodge

Alaska vacation day 10

After two nights at the Denali Princess Lodge, we took a bus for a 2 hour trip to the McKinley Princess Lodge, for one night. It poured rain the entire trip, and it was looking doubtful for any Mt. Denali sighting. Both lodges are part of the Princess Cruise Lines family.

This is the great room at McKinley Princess Lodge. All these chairs are pointing west, looking out of a large window pointed at Mt. Denali. When we arrived, we were about 2 hours from leaving for our Denali Glacier Landing airplane trip. The weather did not seem like it would cooperate. See the next post to find out how it went.

People enjoying the fire pits. There is a concession stand selling popcorn and beverages. Alaska has a law that minors are not even allowed in the same room where alcoholic beverages are sold/consumed.

More lush vegetation. Alaska has a short summer, and hence a short growing season, but when it is growing the plants are beautiful!

Mushrooms outside our door. Looks like something from Mario Brothers.

I turned on the night setting to my camera, and the Big Dipper with Northern Star became clear. This is also the state flag of Alaska.

Denali Princess Lodge

Alaska vacation days 8-9

This was our lodge for 2 nights at Denali. Since we were four hours late arriving, we didn’t get to do or see anything the first night.

If you are interested in buying a bronze sculpture of a humpback whale, the lodge has it for sale! The price is $10,495.95!

Landscaping at and around the lodge was lush and colorful!

For dinner, we went to the “Songs of Denali” Dinner Theater show.

It was an entertaining evening. They were very talented.

The cast of the show, which is a musical story about early efforts at climbing Mt. Denali.

Denali National Park and Preserve

Alaska vacation day 9

Denali National Park and Preserve is much more than Mt. McKinley (or Mt. Denali). Mt. McKinley National Park became a national park in 1917 under President Woodrow Wilson. Under President Jimmy Carter in 1980, it was expanded to become Denali National Park and Preserve.

There is abundant wildlife and wilderness. Or at least that is the rumor – haha! We took a natural history tour where we was beautiful landscapes but very little actual wildlife! From a distance we saw Dall sheep and caribou. We did not see any wildlife up close. Other people, on different tours, saw caribou, black and grizzly bears and moose very close to their buses.

Savage Cabin. Park Rangers use cabins such as this one while they patrol the park road and backcountry in the summer, and in the winter park rangers patrol the park on dog sleds from these cabins. Our tour guide gave a masterful and entertaining presentation on the life cycle of the moose mating process, called “the rut”. It involved moose urine, dirt and mud, fights, strutting and a harem. You can ask me for details when you see me, or simply use your imagination!

These moose antlers weigh about 35 pounds.

The small pinecones on these black spruce are mainly at the top of the trees.

The yellow in these pictures are willow.

Native Athabascan explaining his culture. The native cultures all but disappeared after the US outlawed many of their traditions and religions, but the cultures are starting to make a comeback. To preserve native languages, videos are being recorded for a permanent record of their language.

Mt. Denali! This is the tallest point in North America, at 20,320 feet above sea level! Only 30 percent of visitors to Denali National Park ever get to actually see the mountain, due to the prevalence of cloud cover. Here, the clouds backed off on a fairly gray day so we could see pretty much the whole mountain! We actually saw the mountain three days in a row, which is practically unheard of! We saw it from the train yesterday, but I could not get a picture, and we will see it again tomorrow – details on another post!

This is a beautiful fall scene at Denali. The yellows are willow, and the reds are fire weed and several types of red berries. Fall lasts only a few weeks here. This field should be covered in snow in 2 or 3 weeks.

The Train to Denali National Park

Alaska vacation day 8

So we came to the end of our cruise at Whittier. We disembarked from the ship and boarded the Denali Express train. This ride was supposed to be 10 hours – from 8 AM to 6 PM. However, due to circumstances out of our engineer’s control, wee didn’t arrive at the Denali Princess Lodge until after 10 PM! A southbound train engine was hit by a mudslide so they had to be cleared to resume before we could proceed.

We took this train to Denali National Park. We were in the first passenger car – first class!

The ride to Denali was a feast of incredible scenery. Here is one of about 100,000 glaciers in Alaska. What an amazing place is Alaska!

These mountains are in the Chugach Range.

Turnagain Arm off of Cook Inlet. We saw beluga whales here.

Birch trees, which are used in Alaska to make Birch syrup.

These mountains and the ones below are in the Alaska Range.

Our tour guide said that the snow on these mountains was not there four days before we got there. This was all fresh snow. They call it “Termination Snow” because it means that the tourist season will soon be over, and the workers (who come from all over the world) will lose their jobs.

Shows on the Ship

Alaska Cruise

The entertainment on the Grand Princess was pretty good. There was always some show going on all evening. The talent was very good. Good musicians.