Day 15: The Mountain

Sunday, July 26, 2009
The plan for today included a very long bus tour, taking is into Denali to see the sights. But before we could do that, we needed to eat breakfast. We went to a buffet that I was less than impressed by before making our way to the lodge to catch the bus.

Our tour was basically on a school bus with nicer seats. We had about 8 hours to spend on this bus. Oh boy. We got settled in our seats, near the back (we took the row with the wheel wells, since Sophie certainly didn't need the leg space in her car seat and and I didn't actually mind either. Steve and I sat together, Sarah and Sophie, and Dad and David. Occasionally, we played musical seats. Lunch was waiting for us at our seats, we stowed them in the bins on top until meal time. Our guide was Marsha, not the friendliest person I've ever met. Her opening monologue was pretty bossy sounding. She got a bit better as the day wore on, though.

After leaving the lodge, we made our way to the park entrance. We learned that private vehicles can generally only travel the first 15 miles of the only road through the park. The rest of that road (about 75 miles) is accessible only to park vehicles and tour buses. This is so as little disturbance to the wildlife as possible occurs. The road is also unpaved.

The sun was out for our trip, so we got to see beautiful scenery all around. The bus stopped occasionally when wildlife was spotted, too. The driver had an unhealthy fascination with the state bird of Alaska, the ptarmigan. There wasn't much that was too exciting about this bird, but we had to stop nearly every time we saw one on the side of the road. She also really liked the Alaskan ground squirrel, though I don't recall seeing any of those. Darn. We did see lots of bears (including cubs rolling down hills and playing around), some moose, caribou, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and a variety of other birds. We did not see any wolves. I'm glad I brought my binoculars along because most of the time the animals were quite far away. Thanks to Sarah's awesome camera, we got some good pictures.

Ptarmigan!

Mama bear and her cubs

A playful bear cub

Caribou

Moose!

We got out of the bus at a few rest areas to look around and use the bathrooms. I would suggest, to anyone taking this trip in the future, do your best to not use the bathrooms. They are glorified outhouses - a "toilet" with a big hole underneath where you could feel a breeze while you went about your business. It was, um, strange. And apparently changing diapers was even more adventuresome because there were no changing stations. Ew.

We saw beautiful mountain ranges, fields, rivers, etc. We drove on narrow roads next to steep cliffs (with no railings...). But best of all, we had great weather to see Mt. McKinley. One of the two peaks was visible and it was really impressive. McKinley creates it's own weather so often the mountain is hidden, especially in the summer. We took lots and lots of pictures both of McKinley and the rest of what we saw.

Images from Denali National Park:

The tour was certainly better than I thought it would be, though it was a particularly windy day, which brought lots of sand from the gravel road into the bus. Every time I blew my nose for the next day or two, I was still finding bits of Denali. Sophie was pretty good, again. She slept for a little while, played, etc. She has become pretty darn good at sitting through longs bus/boat/plane/train rides.

A Gordon family portrait

Sophie making silly faces at Grandpa

Amy and Dad

Sophie decides to wear her lunch box

Amy and Sarah

And he claims to be a New Yorker?! Ha - we all knew he was a closet Boston fan...

I slept for perhaps 5-10 minutes total on the tour. During this time, Steve decided to take it upon himself to cause more mayhem with that fish. I'll soon be sending Steve to spend lots of time with the fishes if he keeps that up.

Sophie, always the lady...

After we arrived back at the lodge that afternoon, it was time for a little nap before evening babysitting duties. Sarah and Steve went on a dinner date to the really nice restaurant. Not five minutes after they left, I discovered Sophie had a poopy diaper. I am convinced they did this on purpose though they deny it. Sophie was perfectly cheerful for awhile. David and I decided it was time for dinner so we tried to get a hold of Dad (who had since moved to his own room, in a different cabin). He wasn't answering his phone, so we walked over there and knocked on the door. He still didn't answer. It drives me CRAZY when he does this. We though maybe we'd go to the pizza place but then decided we didn't really want to tackle that alone with Sophie. We finally got dad on the phone and all did pizza together. Sophie wasn't overly interested in eating her portion - she preferred to throw it on the floor and try hang out with the people at the next table. Oops. By the time we got done with that, Sarah and Steve were back from their yummy dinner and Sophie was handed off for bed time.

We had to pack everything up because our luggage needed to be left outside our door for pickup to move to the next lodge tomorrow. Dad, David, and I had our flightseeing trip in the morning. I was, admittedly, pretty nervous about this...

Our Journey, Thus Far (Part 3)