Today began bright (what else would you expect? We’re in Alaska in the summer) and early so that we could get our bags into the hall by 6am and depart for Denali on the Wilderness Express. They got us to the depot before 8 and we boarded our tour group’s private car for the day, complete with a bar.

We left around 8:20, and a few minutes later we were leaving Fairbanks, just as the temperature was finally getting more reasonable – it was the coldest temperature we’d seen on the trip so far.

The car was two stories high with lots of glass on both floors. The restaurant was downstairs, and there was Alaskan art decorating the staircase.

The first two-thirds of the trip was mostly through spruce forests and one small town, Nenana (on the Tawana River). There were lots of curves where we could see the front half of the train (the Wilderness Express cars are at the rear).

The scenery started changing about 11:30am as we started paralleling the Nenana River (like the Tawana, it’s glacier-fed and milky) as we neared Denali.

I knew we were nearing the park itself when we started seeing rafters in the river – they have to wear dry suits because the water is very, very cold.

We reached Denali Depot a bit after noon and were faced with a choice. We could stay in the Park and take a shuttle to our hotel in a few hours or go with our bus to “Glitter Gulch” (Nenama Canyon) for lunch and some light shopping before the bus took us to the hotel (the Denali Park Village). Our Tour Director strongly suggested the latter course, and we agreed. “Glitter Gulch” wasn’t all that glamorous, but we had lunch and then walked down the bike/pedestrian path to the bridge over Kingfisher Creek.

Hikers had built cairns in the retaining wall near the North end of the bridge for, as far as I can tell, no particular reason.

We walked to the second viewpoint on the bridge and then turned back to the Gulch because it looked like we were going to be hit by thunderstorms.

The storms never arrived, so we looked around some more, talked with the bus driver, went shopping for chocolate, and enjoyed a comfortable ride to the hotel. Two of our friends, serious dog people, had stayed in the park to see the sled dogs – they thought it was great, even though they had a hard time getting to the hotel due to shuttle issues.

The hotel is pleasant (even without air conditioning) and is on the Nenana River. Unfortunately, our room faces an interior road, but there’s a nature walk along the river that we enjoyed before dinner.

Dinner was a musical show called “Cabin Nite” – the cast (who doubled as the wait staff) were early settlers in this part of Alaska and they told us why they were here. Robert W. Service poems were prominent, beginning with the pre-show outside.

Several of the cast members came around to the table so we could take close-up photos – thanks, Wendy, for taking this photo of the chorus girl!

Tomorrow morning, we’ll be taking the Tundra Wilderness Tour, a 5-1/2 hour bus ride through Denali. We leave the hotel at 6:45am. Good night!

Our CruiseTour got off to a great start today. Our first stop was the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The bowhead whale skeleton gets your attention right away!

Diane and I went to the second floor to see the all-Alaskan art collection on the second floor. There were pieces by Alaskan artists (both Native and Western), as well as pieces by non-Alaskans of Alaskan subjects. Some of my favorites:

All American Picassoan Inupiaq Shaman Hero (1991) by Joseph T. Senungetuk

Bering Strait Faces the Last Roundup in the Last Frontier (1982) by Dan DeRoux

The Great Alaska Outhouse Experience was an interesting piece that you could actually touch and go into; it’s decorated with all sorts of interesting artifacts.

The first floor is devoted to the natural, cultural, and political history of Alaska. Bears are prominent:

There was a large area that talked about the expulsion and relocation of the Japanese and Aleut population during World War II. I knew about the Japanese relocation, but this was the first time I learned that the Aleuts were also relocated – not so much about trumped-up concerns about their loyalty as much as about “protecting” them from a Japanese invasion (the only part of North America that was occupied (briefly) by the Japanese were Alaskan islands).

There was a lot of space given over to the megafauna of Alaska, past and present.

The Gold Rush brought many Western settlers to Alaska, along with their firearms.

Native culture got a lot of attention, of course.

I had just a minute to get a photo of a tiny Northern Bluebell using their scanning microscope.

We left the Museum to go to downtown Fairbanks for lunch; our guide talked about the problems of living with extreme cold (for example, tires lose their roundness in temperatures below -50F!). Downtown Fairbanks is served by central steam heat and there are vent pipes all over the area, painted by local artists, such as this painting of Marilyn Monroe.

After lunch, we drove to the Riverboat Discovery Landing for a journey up the Chena River on the Discovery III. It was a wonderful afternoon, far more interesting than I’d expected.

We visited the “40 below” room before boarding the ship for a photo op – it was cold, even if it wasn’t quite as cold as advertised.

There was a Piper Super Cub on the river near our departure, and by a strange coincidence, not obny did the pilot have to wait for clearance to take off until we were nearby, but he was equipped to talk to the ship over our PA system. He taxiied down river so we could get a good view, then went back upriver and took off right next to us.

We weren’t alone on the river.

Our next stop was just offshore of the Trail Breaker Kennel, where they showed us how they train sled dogs, even in the summer.

We saw a herd of caribou.

We sailed to the end of the Chena river where it meets the Tanana. The Tanana is glacial and somewhat milky and you can see the boundary – the captain said it made for interesting sailing sometimes.

Our final stop was at “Chena Village”, which was a reconstructed Athabascan village. We saw demonstrations of various aspects of Athabascan life (mostly before Westerners came to stay), including fishing, textiles, crafting, and more. There was even a stuffed moose.

And then it was back to the hotel for dinner and packing – we leave for Denali early tomorrow morning.