We put our bags outside the room (well, Gael did) at 5:45a this morning while I slept off my web-page creation stupor from last night. Up and into the shower by 6:30a and on the bus by 7:15a.
What should have been a short ride to the train depot in Fairbanks turned into yet another tour of Fairbanks as the train had problems getting organized. We're now used to the Alaska "ish" method of timekeeping: "We'll be leaving at 8-ish..."
The Celebrity dome cars were very plush; we were told the Celebrity buses cost $500K each; I can only imagine how much the train cars cost. Downstairs was the dining area and upstairs the dome car. These cars are 18' high and give a terrific view:
Our on-train Tour Director Jennifer was Miss Personality and we enjoyed her chatter immensley. Breakfast was outstanding:
Our only problem is that we were seated midway in the dome section and the A/C was heavily "ON" in that area. I nearly froze -- the first time I've been cold in Alaska. Gael was chilly, too, as we blasted along through the permafrost:
One of the switchbacks gave me this opportunity:
Shooting through a plexiglas window carries its own challenges:
The train ride was about three hours from Fairbanks to Denali; we all looked for wildlife and were lucky enough to see seven moose along the way -- all on the left side of the train. Maybe they were tethered there... Nahhhh!
We reached Denali unevenfully and were bused (in our very own #131 bus which James had thoughtfully driven up to Denali) to the Welcome center where we had a snack lunch and queued up for our Tundra Discovery Tour. We were lucky enough to have an "experimental" bus for our tour:
This was a definite step "up" from the usual Blue Bird school buses that everyone else used. Our driver, Bruce Lee (no, not that (dead) Bruce Lee) was extremely knowledgable (and voluble) about the ecosystem of the Denali National Park.
The scenery was breathtaking (as you might imagine):
Our bus tour took nearly seven hours but the time went by quickly as we all looked for wildlife all the way way up and back. We saw a lot. First a mother grizzly and one of her three cubs:
.. then a moose:
.. then caribou catching some shade under a bridge:
..another caribou on the way home:
.. and some Dall Sheep:
This was a long day with little production but we were comfortable the entire time (except perhaps when the bus strayed a bit too closely to the thousand-foot drop on one side..) And, it was dusty; took a whole li'l bottle of hotel shampoo to wash out the 1/2 acre of Denali Dust from my hair.
Bruce brought us back to Denali and to our hotel:
.. where we had a couple of drinks, located a misplaced bag and turned in early. We don't have to be on the bus until 11:30a tomorrow!
