The Average Blogger : Alaska 2 -- Denali, Eating, Fairbanks

So, Denali. What can I say ?It was amazing. Our first afternoon there, we drove as far as you can into the park -- about 20 miles or so, and puttered around the Savage River a little bit.

We hiked a ways, but we didn't have a trail map and even though we figured it looped around at some point it was starting to rain so we just headed back after a half-hour or so. I didn't figure on seeing any animals in the part of the park where Just Anyone could drive, so imagine my surprise when on our way out we stop with a cluster of other people and watch a giant moose and his lady friend while they chomped down dinner.

I hate autofocus. I should really learn how to use my damn camera already.

Next day, Gary went off on his own while the three of us took a daylong bus tour into the depths of the park with Kantishna Wilderness Trails Tour. It was quite a trip. They load a bunch of people onto an old school bus and some certified-type (and genuinely knowledgable) guide drives this creaky old bus along a frighteningly narrow road with some frighteningly precipitous dropoffs and yaps about what you're looking at while all the passengers stare out the window looking for bears and moose and ptarmigans while hoping nothing scares the driver or otherwise runs the bus off the road. You basically go through a huge chunk of the park, stop at the "historic town" of Kantishna -- which is now basically a lodge with some folks around who explain what stuff used to be like, a la Williamsburg, but smaller -- have lunch, poke around, then drive the same road back looking for more critters and different afternoon light for picture-taking.

So this was Wildlife Day, and we basically got sightings of all animals in the park except lynx. (Though I could have done with a better view of caribou. Sigh.) People there are very hot on Dall sheep, which ... I don't know, whatever, we saw a lot of them and it was like looking at sheep.

We saw two wolves, and I can't at all describe how amazingly cool that was.

And a grizzly bear! Not to be confused with the smaller and less ferocious black bear of the previous post.

We could also see Mt. McKinley, which is apparently a big deal. I guess the peak has its own weather system and 90 percent of the time all you can see is clouds. We totally lucked out on the weather for this trip, did I mention that?

The Young Prince was surprisingly malleable on this day of forced inactivity. The day started so early that he actually slept for the first couple hours, and then once he woke up and got over his Morning Cranks, he was more or less OK.

This was a setup. He wasn't actually screaming inside the bus. I don't think.

I mean, he didn't spend a lot of time looking out the window trying to spot wildlife, but he did look up when others spotted things, and he was more than happy to get off the bus and walk around the stops and look at things. Honestly, from what little I remember of myself at the age of 7 I don't think I would have done very well just sitting and staring out a bus window for 9 hours. Where I would have read a book and made myself car sick, he played his video game with the sound off -- also a minor victory for the old folks, since he went volume-less without protest. At Kantishna, he discovered to his amazement that he likes tomato soup and then was sucked into a hula hoop demonstration and did better than the woman running the program (Thanks for the practice, Grandparents!) -- a lovely woman whom he then latched on to and became her special helper in the panning-for-gold demonstration.

Panning for gold is a setup; there's a nail-clipping of gold in every bag they hand out. The YP found his fastest, and we got it laminated -- and then it promptly disappeared. I'm sure whoever had the hotel room after us was thrilled to find it and retired immediately.

When we got back that night, we reconnected with Gary and had what was probably the second-best meal of our trip at the lodge restaurant. So, so good.

After that we went back to the room and tried to settle in for the night. Alaska time had me sort of off-kilter for most of the trip. When we got there, it wasn't getting dark til 10:30 or so at night, although they were losing 7 minutes of light a day, so by the time we left it was getting dark around 9. I had very little idea what time it was where we were, and even less idea of what time it might have been at home. I think I did most of my checking-on-work stuff around 3 a.m. DC time. Heh.

Next morning, Gary headed back to Wasilla to wrap up his job stint there and head back to Tucson, while we futzed around until later in the morning, when we were picked up by a van service and taken to our next adventure: a helicopter ride to a glacier. The copter carried us and another couple out to this ice patch, the Yanert glacier, at the foot of Mount Deborah, where we got out and wandered around staring at the landscape. The YP, of course, is an old hand at helicopters, having ridden in one in Hawaii. Not Your Average Blogger and I were both glad this one had doors -- NYAB for security's sake, me because it would have been Effing Cold without them.

The glacier was amazing. It was gorgeous, and silent, and so removed from anything. I don't quite know what the YP thought of it, other than it was a chance to play in the snow in summer time.

Ice falls, above. Ice river, below.

It took some doing to explain to him that we weren't standing on dirt that was covered with snow, like at home, but that we were standing on a piece of ice that was as tall as 6 of our office buildings.

I don't know that he ever fully grasped what we were telling him, though flying back and seeing dirt on top of ice might have helped him a little bit. By the end of the trip he was able to explain the difference between moraine, glacier melt and snow melt, though. I am not sure how long he'll retain that info, either. He has held on to the difference between moose and caribou antlers, at least.

After the helicopter, we headed back to the park for another little hike, this one down to a lake near the park entrance. I am, it seems, dreadfully out of shape. I've got no air. Or perhaps I'm just not suited for my family's approach to exercise. The menfolk just bolt up and down these trails and get to some spot and wait for me unless I tell them not to, whereas I sort of plod my way along toting my camera at my standard 3 mph, slowing down to 2 as I huff up some of those steeper suckers. I like to think that I am the tortoise to their hare, but the truth is I'm really just a sad sack to their speed and endurance. And I need to go on a diet. Glargh. Still, the hike was nice, and got us all good and hungry for that night's dinner at the Salmon Bake -- which was OK, but not as good as the night before. In fact, the food sort of trailed downhill the whole trip. Even the worst was still excellent, however. This was probably the best Eating Vacation that I've taken since last we saw New Orleans.

Next morning we headed back to the park one last time -- the YP got his junior ranger badge and we took a last drive into the park for one last view of what there was to see. We got to see a Moose Crossing.

After that, we drove up to Fairbanks, with a stop at North Pole, Alaska -- not to be confused with North Pole, The World. Santa was there and chatted up the YP, but he's not taking orders yet. We also saw some penned-up reindeer. What better choice for dinner that night than reindeer sausage lasagna? The YP was most horrified with me and insisted I would get nothing good for Christmas.

The Fairbanks Princess Lodge is a stupid place. It is too far out of town to be a useful hotel, but it is too far from anything remotely natural to be a lodge. The restaurant is meh. If we had it to do again, this is the one place I would have opted for something different. On the plus side, it was the first place we stayed where the staff would call your room if the northern lights were showing -- and they were! So we all went out the parking lot and shaded our eyes against the lights and looked at this giant green rainbow-like thing arcing over our heads. NYAB and I scuffed off a ways behind the hotel to see it with a little more darkness.

That was the other semi-regret of the trip. The phone rang at midnight and the kid didn't wake up. After some deliberation, we decided to let him sleep, since it would be hard to wake him up, he'd never go back to sleep, he wouldn't know what he was looking at, etc. etc. He was very unhappy to learn this the next morning and insisted that if the hotel called again any other nights, we should take him too. Turns out that was the only night they were visible. But now I can cross "see the northern lights" off my do-before-dying list, though I hear September 2013 is going to be the kickass time to go back and get a great show.Who's with me, besides the kid?

Next morning we headed to another tiny airport and got on another tiny plane -- though this one seated 8 or 10, I think -- and flew up to the Arctic Circle. I think the YP was disappointed, he was hoping for Fortress of Solitude snowscapes and lots of dancing polar bears. What he got was a lot of green, a couple cats, and some cool views of the pipeline.

The plane landed at a town called Coldfoot, which looked to me like it consisted of a tiny airport and a truck stop. Part of the tour involved going down the (newly paved and thus highly disappointing) Dalton Highway to visit a place called Wiseman. I'm not sure what you'd call it -- a village? A settlement? A camp? About 15 people live there, and man, I tell you what, they are old school. They hunt and fish; they use solar and wind, they have giant woodburning stoves, if they want a freezer they dig a hole under their house.

Let me put it this way: The kid amused himself by stacking lopped-off moose and caribou forelegs into a piece of art.

It is moments like that when I realize how very ill-equipped I am to survive in any sort of setting that requires me to be even remotely useful. I couldn't possibly cut enough wood to burn all winter, I don't think I could fell a tree for log cabin purposes, and even if I could, I don't know how to build a house. I don't know how to make a snare, I doubt I could hit a caribou with a shotgun, and even if I did manage to accidentally down one, I wouldn't have the first idea what to do with it to make it edible. Not to mention the whole freezing to death thing. I've generally held a great amount of respect for the elements -- I know Mother Nature ain't my friend; I've seen what tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes do. I know the ocean is a fracking scary place. I think people who build their houses on beach cliffs are idiots who deserve whatever mudslide happens to them. But none of what I've seen -- NONE -- compares with what you realize could happen to you up there if you stop and think about it for 12 seconds. You really have to know what you're doing and be ready to cowgirl up and do it the second it has to be done.

Needless to say, I was sheepishly happy to get back to the hotel that night. I blasted the heater and stole all the blankets just because I could.

Next morning, because we were feeling less than adventurous, we ate at Denny's. Granted, it was the northernmost Denny's in the world, so we had that going for us. Not surprisingly, it was very much like all the more southerly Denny's eateries I've tried.

That day was a long driving day, with some eagles spotted and some nice vistas. It was also the only really bad weather day we had, very California winter-y -- wet, sort of cold, made colder by the damp.

We got to Wrangell-St. Elias that afternoon, poked around at the park visitor center and wandered on the trail nearby for about an hour, then checked into our next Princess Lodge (Copper Center, better than Fairbanks, with a bodacious fireplace and comfy couch in the common area.) I had caribou for dinner. It is gamy and a little tough. NYAB was on his 142nd salmon of the trip, this one with some kind of walnut coating, and declared it excellent.

Up next: Mines, Dogs and Boats. Probably the last installment.