2016 Alaska Day 7: Hubbard Glacier

The (Calving) Glacier Says "Moo"

Being our first day of the trip without an early morning activity we were able to sleep in a little bit before meeting for breakfast in the Windjammer. We really liked the layout of the WJ on Radiance. It felt much less crowded than those on Oasis or Enchantment. Walking in you immediately have a view to both sides of tables, giving you an early opportunity to scope out possible seating. Additionally, the WJ staff seemed much more aggressive (in a good way) about asking you your party size and helping find a table. The food stations themselves also seemed better spaced out than the other ships we've been on. As a large group we often found ourselves eating in the Rita's Crabshack space, where most of the tables were arranged to support 10-12 people. As the winds were rarely blowing this was actually a pretty mild place to eat. As the cruise moved further south we started to see a few people moving out to the fantail and eating in the open air.

Following breakfast D, E, and A went to one of the first of many trivia events various members of our group would take part in.  This time it was Harry Potter trivia, where we were pleasantly surprised to find that the questions were different than the same contest on Enchantment.  We scored 24/25 but lost in a multi-team playoff.  I represented the team at the playoff and couldn't help but laugh at the obscure tie-breaker question: "What phone number did Arthur Weasley dial to get into the Ministry of Magic?"  Of course, someone knew the answer right away and beat us out for the priceless prize (RCCL highlighter pens, most likely).

A panoramic view of Hubbard Glacier, taken from the balcony of port cabin 9250.

Later in the day we made it into the bay fronting Hubbard Glacier.  In fact, we made it REALLY close.  Sounds like we may have been more successful in closing on the glacier's face than prior cruises.  It was here that our stateroom arrangements gave us a huge advantage.  D&E had the coveted aft 9256, while S&W had the neighboring 9258.  (I booked the cruise on the 1st day of sales.)  R,A&J shared 9250 on the port side (2 doors away from us), M&C had 9248, and N&H had 9246.  So we had both aft and port cabins just a few feet from each other.  This allowed us to keep moving from port balconies to aft balconies as the ship turned circles at the face of the glacier.

From L to R: H, W, N, S, C, and M hanging out on the balconies of port cabins 9246 and 9248.  Photo taken from 9250.

There's no question that the port side of the ship is HEAVILY favored.  About the only time the starboard side would face the glacier was as it passed by during a full rotation of the ship.  In general, the port side remained broadside to the glacier's face most of the time.  Given the freedom to rush port to aft balconies as needed we enjoyed spectacular views of the glacier throughout the afternoon.

As folks may be aware. the ship launches a small boat while at the glacier.  I assume it has some critical duties to perform that are related to keeping the ship safe, but one of the fun things they do is try to locate a chunk of ice to bring onboard for display (and maybe to create an ice sculpture from - I'm not sure about that).  We did see the boat as we spun around, but if they did capture a chunk of ice we didn't see that.

The small boat.

Closeup details of the "fingers" of ice at the top of the glacier.  The characteristic blue hue of the glacier was evident all day.

As expected, we got to see a number of calvings. It seems to be the case that once you sight a calving you should continue to keep looking in the same area for additional activity, particular if you want photos. Most of the time we were there there were two "hot spots" on either end of the glacier, each with multiple calvings. Near the end of our time there we finally saw a HUGE calving event, dead center in front of us. A very broad section of ice broke off and plunged down. It was so large that it created a large wave that radiated out and swamped some rocks. Judging distances is really hard, but best guess is that the breakaway was a few hundred feet wide and about 50' tall, and the wave generated was about 1-2' high. Awesome!

 

The really huge calving in progress.  Ice is coming down across the entire width of the photo, and the large chunks hitting the water are starting to send up a wave of water radiating out from the bottom of the glacier's face.

Another view of the same.  The whole face of the glacier from the water to about half the way up is collapsing.

As mentioned earlier, S's luggage had not yet shown up.  On day of sailing, when it became evident that her suitcase was MIA, Guest Services had provided her with a few T-shirts and a handful of complimentary laundry vouchers.  They continued to search the ship as it was possible that her bag had been mis-delivered (although it seemed unlikely that anyone getting the wrong bag would have kept it and not said anything).  The next day they contacted the hotel where it was determined that the bag had been left onshore.  Annoyingly, since it was the weekend the hotel couldn't commit to having the bag arrive in Juneau on Monday, so they finally committed to Tuesday in Skagway.  Royal continued to offer laundry and T-shirts, and also picked up the bag in Skagway to deliver to S.  Obviously this was a less-than-ideal situation for S, but she made due.  What else could she do?

That night was formal night in the MDR.  Most of the folks I saw entering the MDR made attempts.  S borrowed an extra dress that N had packed so she was able to abandon her custom trip T-shirt for at least one meal.  We took a number of photos on the MDR steps and then relaxed at the Schooner before heading over for the first production show, Pianoman, featuring music by Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Barry Manilow.  Given that all the source material was from male artists it didn't allow the two female vocalists as much opportunity to shine as the men.  Overall the dancing was stronger than the vocals.  We were all unimpressed with the comedian.

Having a drink in the Centrum before dinner.  Left to right: W, S (in borrowed dress), E, R (both standing), H, C (both seated), M (foreground, bottom right).  In the background you can see others dressed up for formal dinner.

We rounded the night out with the Majority Rules game at the Colony Club, hosted by Gemma (who was completing her contract and rotating off as we left) and Colin(???) from Jamaica.  Gemma, in particular, was a hoot. 

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

Read More

2016 Alaska Days 5 and 6: Seward

The Alaska Railroad: The Beautiful Section

This was an early wake-up day. Unlike the depots in Fairbanks or Denali, where you could arrive 20-30 minutes pre-boarding without problems, the Anchorage Depot advises you to arrive at least 60 minutes ahead of time, and this advice was confirmed by the folks at the hotel. (The AKRR folks actually have a nice PowerPoint presentation that walks you through how to best navigate through the depot.) Since we were traveling GoldStar this time our tickets included breakfast on-board, so we timed things to simply wake up, shower, and then meet in the lobby to walk back to the train station by 5:45AM.

Once at the station we waited in line to check-in and turn in our luggage.  Unlike the smaller stations we did not have to present all our photo IDs.  In an attempt to speed things up the Anchorage station handed me (the nominal Group Leader) a form to sign where I agreed that everyone traveling with me was who they said they were.  So only I showed an ID and, in return, I was given all our boarding passes and an envelope with eleven GoldStar lapel pins.  We took all this outside and across the street in order to pose for our first full group picture.  (N, H and J had arrived the prior night, after most of us had gone to bed.)   We also took this time to hand out the custom T-shirts we'd had made (at customink.com) for the trip.

The gang is all here!  From left to right: (kneeling row) M, A, D; (standing row) W, S, H, J, C, R, E; (on wall) N

There's widespread consensus on Cruise Critic that this section of the railroad is the most scenic, and we found no reason to disagree with that opinion.  This was a truly glorious segment of the trip.  Upgrading to GoldStar was totally worth the extra expense for so many reasons, as the following pictures can hopefully illustrate.

N and H show off their morning Bloodies.  Each GoldStar passenger gets two beverages as part of their train fare.  As you get them from the bar (those legs in the center back are standing at the bar) your boarding pass is punched.  Collectively, we enjoyed Bloodies, Screwdrivers, Alaskan beer, sparkling wine, coffee, hot chocolate, and various soft drinks.

One (of many) beautiful views from on board.  I probably could have taken this shot from Adventure class...but I'm not sure I would have had as wide a window to shoot through.

Yeah, it's really amazing out there...

Representative of the hundreds of waterfalls you'll see throughout Alaska.

Another reflection shot.

A pair of Dall Sheep, captured by W's camera.

All of the above shots were taken BEFORE breakfast!  What a way to start the day... :-)  For some reason I forgot to take a photo of the breakfast menu.  R had biscuits and gravy, others had French toast with reindeer sausage. I had an egg scramble with peppers. Breakfast was definitely better than dinner.

Our original plan had been to book at the Holiday Inn at the small boat harbor.  However, back in December 2015 when we were making arrangements the hotel's website wouldn't allow any bookings for June, and when called the hotel also declined to accept any bookings without explanation.  It turns out that an ownership change was underway and the hotel was being re-branded as Harbor 360 Hotel.  Not knowing that, we booked at Best Western Plus Edgewater, instead.

Seward

We arrived at the Seward depot and looked around for the hotel shuttle.  Not finding it, I asked the general town shuttle driver (in the yellow school bus) if she was the best option for our hotel, to which she replied "if your hotel doesn't have a shuttle".  I ended up calling the hotel and was told that the driver was on the way.  This minor inconvenience was - unfortunately - an omen.  Strike one.  The shuttle did arrive, but had so many passengers that they had to make a total of three trips to get us all.  Half our party made it onto shuttle #2, three of us had to wait for shuttle #3, and three others decided to make the walk from the station to the hotel.  (The latter group did this happily - they wanted the chance to stretch their legs.)

Once at the hotel none of our rooms were ready.  Strike two.  The hotel kept telling us that they'd had a lot of check-outs that day and they were scrambling to catch up.  That may be true, but my point of view is that this was THEIR problem...and they were trying to make it ours.  Rooms weren't available until a couple of hours after check-in time had passed.

We passed some of this time by having lunch at Zudy's Cafe, which was about 1/2 a block away. The panini sandwiches and soup were nothing to write home about, but they filled empty stomachs.  After lunch D, A, and W made a quick geocache grab just outside the restaurant - but it was a bit too cold and damp to really enjoy the views of Resurrection Bay outside - in lieu of going to the Alaska Sealife Center or taking a trip to Exit Glacier - so we eventually all returned to the hotel lobby to wait for our rooms and/or excursion pickups.

H, N, and A all went off to a dog sled place.  I didn't organize this one so not sure of the details, other than that they had a great time.  They made the reservation only about 2 hours before the event, which surprised me - I figured most stuff would be pre-booked long in advance.

The place that I went with M, C, S & W *was* booked long in advance, and necessarily so.  We went zip lining with Stoney Creek Canopy Adventures.  None of us had ever done this before (both H and N had prior zip line adventures so had earlier declined the option to go with us).  We had a BLAST!  For me, this was the best thing we did the whole trip.  After we did a bit of "ground school" on a very short line suspended about 8' above ground, learning how to read the guide's hand signals, brake, spin, and hand-over-hand up the line in case of stopping short of the platform, we were driven up the mountain to the real thing.  We experienced 8 lines of differing lengths (all about 70' above the ground), crossed three rope bridges, and also did 2 rappels (of about 45-60' each).  The guides (Mike and ??) did a great job of introducing us to new skills with each line - we all felt nothing but confidence as we went along.  In addition to the five of us there were also three people from another family, for the maximum group size of eight plus two guides.  No cameras are allowed, but they took a few standard pictures and made them available for $8 per person on the web.

M takes off.  This was the 4th or 5th zip of the day.  The longest line was about 1400', and can be seen to the right in this photo, over the pond.

D handing in the air before starting his first rappel descent.  One of the guides is below me, on the belaying line.  While I was totally in control of my descent he was there to arrest my fall if I'd done something stupid (like let go).  No chance of that, though!

Meanwhile, while the rest of us zipped between trees or rode behind dogs, E, R and J did something critical to success on our upcoming cruise: they visited Safeway and bought 10 bottles of wine (as we had 5 staterooms booked)!  While waiting for the yellow shuttle bus to pick them up after shopping they spent a few minutes inside the Chamber of Commerce talking to some locals and soaking up a bit of Seward flavor.

Once we were all back to the hotel (and finally all in rooms) we gathered again and went for a walk along the shores of Resurrection Bay.  The wind had died down so the walk was much more pleasant than it would have been earlier in the day.  We passed by the marker for Mile 0 of the (original) Iditarod; a skate park - with local children out in shorts and T-shirts on what was, for them, a warm day; and part of the camping area built on top of what used to be Seward's industrial district.  Most of Seward's port industry was literally wiped out by a post-earthquake tsunami in the early 1960's. 

Small group shot at a memorial marker near they Alaska Sealife Center.  From left to right, H, E, A, R.  Just prior to taking this shot D and A had gone off to grab another nearby geocache.

We returned to the hotel for a short rest before walking down to Chinooks Restaurant.  We'd made a reservation as soon as we arrived in Seward, figuring that seating 11 people might be challenging.  Indeed, they mentioned that they already had 3 large parties booked but offered to seat us at 8:15PM.  That wasn't a problem for us so we gladly took them up on the offer.  They seated us right on time and we enjoyed our first family dinner together.

Waiting to order at Chinooks, taken by E.  On the left side of the table, starting in the foreground: S, C E, N, H.  Down the right side: J, R, D, M, A.  Out the window is a view of the small boat harbor.

The quality of dishes varied.  They had a smoked sablefish appetizer that we all agreed was excellent.  We were sorry we'd only gotten one to share around the table. The mussels with chorizo and ceviche appetizers were good, but not great.  We ordered the smoked scallop mac and cheese entree as a shared appetizer and it was very good - it would have been too rich as an entree!  The house salad was very good.  The salmon w/chipotle entree was deemed to be excellent salmon unfortunately overwhelmed by the glaze.  The halibut w/chimichurri was very good, as was the cod.  I can't recall what anyone had for dessert, which is probably an indication that they were average.  They did bring us something with a candle in it in celebration of S's birthday.

We finished up our night with a walk back to the hotel.  We did pass an ice cream parlor on the way and debated stopping in, but at this point (about 10:00PM) we were all tired and didn't want to extend our night any further.  It should be noted that the yellow bus free town shuttle stopped at 7PM, so unless we hired a cab we had no other option than to walk both directions.  Total distance was 1.3 miles each way, so we burned off some calories.  I should note that my mother-in-law J is 84 and is going to outlive all of us.  She took the walking completely in stride (no pun intended)!

Friday, June 24, 2016 (Seward and start of cruise)

We got up early for breakfast as we had an 8:00AM Kenai Fjord boat tour with a 7:10AM pickup scheduled.  (BTW:  Kenai is pronounced KEY-nigh, not KEH-nigh or keh-NIGH.)  Breakfast at the hotel was awful.  Strike three.  We've stayed at Best Western Plus properties before and the quality here was NOT in keeping with the brand.  The scrambled eggs, in particular, were terrible.  I'm always prepared to substitute oatmeal when necessary, which I did here.  This was, perhaps, the most glue-like oatmeal I've ever had.

And now comes strike four, which by itself forever condemns this property for us.  As per their process, we took all our luggage down to the lobby with our ship luggage tags on.  They were to take all our bags (plus many others - lots of folks heading to Radiance staying there) over to the ship while we checked out and went on our excursion.  This they did - for ten of us.  S's bag somehow never made it to the ship.  Her bag would not show up until DAY 4 of the cruise, at Skagway.  The details are sordid.  Suffice it to say that the hotel screwed up MASSIVELY.  (Royal Caribbean, on the other hand, deserves TONS of kudos for the way they handled things.  More on that later.)

If we ever return to Seward we will NOT stay here again. 

Our shuttle arrived right on schedule and took us down to the small boat harbor where we were assigned to The Tanaina.  The tour was enjoyable mostly for the novelty value - we can now say we've seen another National Park.  Overall, however, it is just a long boat ride.  We hit some unexpectedly rough water on the return part of the trip, which normally (I think) ventures through long stretches of the Gulf of Alaska rather than the calmer waters of the fjord.  The captain returned to the inner passage at some point which helped, but both E and R were uncomfortable for the last part of the trip.

Even "just another boat ride" has some pleasant surprises.  We did come across a pod of orcas, as well as a humpback that was repeatedly breaching.  While we saw more whales in Juneau, it was only on this tour that we saw orcas and breaching, so glad we did the tour.

An otter, seen soon after leaving the harbor. 

Three of the four orcas that were swimming close to us.

Our jumping humpback.  He did this 8-10 times while we were within range.  The boat captain had seen him from a long distance and announced "we've got a jumper ahead" before speeding up the boat in hopes of catching him still in action.  Success!

Once the boat tour was over we walked over to the cruise terminal.  This was an easy 15 minutes away.  When we arrived (around 3:30P, if I recall correctly), M realized that he'd left his passport in his luggage.  D'oh!  What happens in cases like this is that the shore staff fill out a form requesting a luggage search, since M couldn't board without his passport.  However, since the luggage had been delivered around 1PM it was considered likely that his bag might already be in his stateroom, so they also suggested that we all board so C could go to their stateroom and check for his bag herself.  It took us about 20 minutes to clear security, get onboard, and make our way to the rooms.  Bags were not yet there, but M&C's bags arrived within about 15 minutes so C went back ashore with M's passport and got him checked in.

After several days of living out of luggage we could FINALLY unpack!  Noticing that our group of 11 was spread among three different tables (despite an email to the dining team a few weeks earlier requesting that we all be seated at a single table that had been acknowledged) D&E made haste to the MDR service desk to straighten things out.  We got all of us reassigned to our own table of 11 in time for the first night's dinner.

We took time to get settled into our staterooms before meeting in the hallway to do a quick tour before our 5:30P MDR seating.  Well, MOST of us met in the hallway.  N wasn't there.  Why not?  Well, turns out N is a natural-born rum runner.  Seeing that no one made any attempt to count the bottles of wine we were bringing on board she had left the ship, hoofed it back to Safeway (she's young and in great shape - she might have run both ways), and was bringing back two more bottles of wine!  The rest of us wandered around the ship, with D, E, R & A (the only ones with prior cruising experience on Royal) leading the way.

With the expertise of seasoned vets, we made sure to time our arrival at the Centrum bar to allow us to grab our first drink of the cruise just prior to dinner.  We went into the MDR and took our seats, and met our waiting team (Reynato, assisted by Roi).  These guys did a good job taking care of us throughout the cruise.  Unlike prior trips, Roi offered a 2nd roll service quickly - points to Roi.  And Reynato was one of those waiters who saw that we liked to taste each other's dishes and started bringing us several extra appetizers and desserts in addition to whatever we'd already ordered.

Post-dessert (which this time included a candle in celebration of W's birthday) we had a quick muster drill that took less than 15 minutes.  Shortest one we've experienced so far.  We all returned to our rooms to prep for the Welcome Aboard show before calling it a night and sleeping soundly.

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

Read More

2016 Alaska Day 4: Anchorage

The Alaska Railroad: The Ugly Section

This day started with a 7:10A wakeup, shower, and finishing up packing so we could have breakfast around 8:00A.  With all that taken care of we made another quick trip to Miner's Market for more food - this time snacks for the train ride down to Anchorage.  We also gassed up the car before returning to DDH where Ann loaded us back up and drove us first to the train depot.  She first drove us to a baggage area at the end of the station where she dropped all our luggage into a container that would eventually be placed into the baggage car.  We then picked up our tickets where, to our delight, we found that we'd been placed right back into the magical Car D, in the same section we'd enjoyed on the Fairbanks to Denali ride.  Of course, this time we didn't have the luxury of 16 seats to ourselves.  We had to share "our" car with eight others!  <g>

We still had time to kill so Ann offered to make our final drop off at the Murie Science Center where we bid her goodbye.  We spent about 45 minutes looking around before heading out on some local trails for another hour or so before ending our walk at the depot once again.

The Denali Star arriving from Fairbanks, ready to take us onboard at Denali for our trip down to Anchorage.

This section is definitely more scenic than the Fairbanks to Denali section...but still not scenic enough that I'd recommend GoldStar service.  There were more green forests and rivers, plus more mountain ranges.  At one point we met the Anchorage to Denali train and there was a swap of parts of each crew so various employees would end the day in their "home" station.  We also took on two high school students were were recent graduates of the railroad's 10 week training course that turns out the on-board guides.  Our seasoned employee guide made way for these two for the rest of the trip to keep us informed about all things historical, cultural, and scenic.  

Sometime around 3PM C mentioned that she really wished we had something sweet to snack on.  At that point M surprised us with one final offering from DDH.  Apparently, when Ann dropped us off that morning she had quietly given M two bars of gourmet chocolate and told him to pull these out "when it seemed like people needed some extra energy".   This was a TOTALLY unexpected surprise and a really nice touch by Ann and Terry.  It brought quite a smile to all our faces.

About an hour outside of Talkeetna we were rewarded with views of Denali off in the distance.  So we could finally count ourselves members of the "30% Club", representative of those who actually manage to see the mountain.

Denali peeks out at us just outside of Talkeetna.

Another view of Denali.  We joined the "30% Club!"

Throughout the trip, as we moved in and out of cellular and/or satellite coverage, we were getting snippets of texts from N and H, both of whom were dealing with challenges with their Delta flights.  N, H, and J were all slated to meet in Seattle before flying together to Anchorage to join up with us that evening.  There was real concern that H, at least, was going to be delayed so much coming out of Portland (Oregon) that she'd arrive in Seattle too late for her connection.  On the train we were discussing lots of contingency plans - thank you, Spreadsheet of Fun, for having so many options listed!

After pulling out of Talkeetna around 5:20PM we did have dinner onboard the train.  The food, not surprisingly, was not very good.  However, the novelty of having a meal on a train is fun.  For just a moment you can imagine what it must have been like in the days of luxury Pullman cars.  When we got back to our seats in Car D we received a great photo showing N, H, and J all on their flight to Anchorage, so we could relax knowing we'd be meeting up with them as per plan.  (H ended up on the Delta flight she was originally scheduled to be on...but not before her luggage ended up on the Alaska Airlines flight that Delta had provisionally put her on in case they didn't get out as planned.  Her bag followed her to Anchorage about an hour after she had landed.)

The dinner menu on board. Those who were traveling GoldStar had dinner included in their fare.  Us "common folks" had to pay the prices shown here.  Don't get your hopes up for gourmet fare!

The lobby guard at Comfort Inn Ship Creek.

We stayed at Comfort Inn Ship Creek, which was about 0.7 miles from the train depot, so we just walked over to it. We got ourselves into our rooms and then took a walk across the street to watch the folks fly fishing along the creek. We saw a couple of fish landed, which one of the guys near us estimated to be in the 17-20 pound range.

 

The fishermen work Ship Creek.  They can only fish until 10PM, and are limited to 7 fish all season.

The one that DIDN'T get away.

Upon return to the hotel we took advantage of the ice cream vending machine to get a late snack and then headed for bed.

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

Read More

2016 Alaska Day 2 and 3: Denali

Alaska 2016/Planning

Planning for Denali boiled down to a few key questions:

1. Did we want to stay at one of the "back country" lodges (with the Denali Backcountry Lodge being our leading candidate)?
2. If not the back country, did we want to stay in Glitter Gulch or elsewhere?
3. For the park itself, shuttle buses or tour buses?

Question #1 resolved to a "no" due to scheduling.  Our schedule allowed for a two night stay at Denali, and the economics of the all-inclusive fees at the DBL across only two nights weren't worth it to me.  If we'd had a couple of full days to relax at the DBL I would have done it, but two nights just felt too rushed to me.

Question #2 was tougher to answer.  Ideally, I wanted to stay at Denali Dome Home because it simply looked much more comfortable than any of the Glitter Gulch hotels.  The problem with DDH (and other similar places) is that you really have to have a car in order to be away from Glitter Gulch and the attendant shuttles.  Of course, if you have a car you are also freed up to try different places for dinner than the normal group of local restaurants.

Well, guess what?  The owners of DDH also run "Keys to Denali", which claims to be the ONLY car rental business in Denali/Healy.  Lots of web searching seemed to confirm this to be true.  So staying at DDH seemed like a good possibility, given that the owners would meet you at the train station upon arrival with your car.  (In fact, once on the ground we saw at least two other places advertising car rental...but I never found reference to either of those places in web-based research.  I don't recall the names of either places - one of them was next to Miner's Market, and the other was at another B&B.)

So, when the trip was just our family of 4 DDH was the leading candidate.  When we expanded to a group of 11 the logistics of car rental became a bit more complicated, as we'd need two cars - or so I thought.  I briefly considered renting car(s) in Fairbanks for our trip to Denali, but I didn't want to continue driving all the way to Anchorage if we could avoid it, so a one-way Fairbanks-to-Anchorage rental wasn't an option.  One-way rentals are also pretty expensive, with surcharges from $150-500, depending on the agency.  However, it turned out that DDH could rent us a 12-passenger van for the 2 days were were there.  (As our plans firmed up we realized that while we were a group of 11 for the cruise, only 8 of us would be doing the land tour ahead of meeting up in Anchorage.  So an 11 pax van for 8 of us left room for our luggage.)  TIMING ADVICE:  We booked DDH just a few days before Christmas 2015 - and by then there were only 3 rooms left available.  So we ended up filling up their rooms.  If we'd waited any longer we likely would have missed out.

If we couldn't do DDH I would have tried to fall back to Denali Bluffs Hotel.  I preferred this to Denali Grande Lodge (same ownership group) as it was cheaper while still looking quite comfortable.  In addition, it appeared to be an easier walk from DBH to a lot of the restaurants, and in this configuration we would have been without a car so that was a consideration.  TIMING ADVICE: In early January 2016 I saw at least one thread on CruiseCritic from someone reporting shock that she was unable to find any availability at the major hotels for June 2016.  Respondents suggested several alternate choices.  The spots recommended didn't ring a bell with me after my searches - I think many of them were small hotels listed on the local Chamber of Commerce site and not places widely discussed.  So, bottom line, for Glitter Gulch it sounds like you might need to be planning at LEAST six months out to have good selection.

Question #3 was finally answered in favor of shuttle buses.  The reasons were as follows:

• Costs for the hop-on/hop-off shuttle buses were significantly less than the tour buses.
• As far as I could tell the seats on all the buses were the same, so the level of "comfort" was the same.  Comfort is a relative term, as the seats are not plush captain's chair type bus seats, but rather sparsely padded leather seats.
• The shuttle bus drivers also drive the tour buses, so all drivers have the same info at their fingertips.  Several folks who have taken the shuttles say that most (but certainly not all) shuttle drivers still provide commentary during the trip - and all drivers on all routes are equally adept at spotting and stopping for wildlife.
• The snacks provided on the tour buses didn't appear to rise above bottle of water/sandwich wrap/granola bar.  I figured we could deal with supplying our own food.  DDH was able to recommend a few places we could go to build sandwich boxes, and many of the restaurant and cafe web sites indicated that they'd provide the same.  And lots of CruiseCritic members mention that they bought stuff at the Subway sandwich shop somewhere near the Princess Lodge.

The trade-off with shuttles is that you don't have a guarantee that you'll get a return trip seat exactly when you want - you're in competition with others also heading back.  You CAN return on the bus you arrived on without any challenges - you get first priority there.  This risk only comes into play if you decide to stay at the turn-around point longer than your bus stays.  For a large group like ours it seemed possible that - if we were to decide to stay at the Eileson Visitor Center longer than our bus would wait - we might have to split up on the return trip in order to find enough seats to accommodate us.

TIMING ADVICE: I pre-booked 8 shuttle slots about 2 weeks after the early December 2015 opening of reservations.  I had no difficulty picking the mid-morning departure time I wanted.  Our hosts at DDH strongly suggested that we did NOT use a pre-9A boarding time.  This was partially so we could enjoy a leisurely breakfast with them, but they also mentioned that, from a practical standpoint, animal viewing was simply not affected by boarding time.  This same advice was to be found from many of the more Alaska-savvy on the CC boards.

Monday, June 20, 2016 (afternoon)

Once we arrived at the Denali Depot and got off the train we had to wait for our luggage to be offloaded.  Had we been staying at one of the Glitter Gulch lodgings the railroad would be pre-tagged our bags with the hotel name and the hotel would have retrieved our luggage and transported it to our rooms for us.  DDH isn't one of the places that has their own tags, however, so we had to wait for our bags to be put out in the "general" pile and collect them ourselves.  While waiting Ann came out to the baggage claim area and shouted out C's last name to locate us.  Ann (she and husband Terry own and operate Denali Dome Home) had driven our van over to the depot to greet us, so once we all had luggage we followed her to the van and stuffed everyone in.  Within about 20 minutes were we at DDH.

DDH was really lovely.  Ann and Terry were both very warm and inviting, and the rooms were all comfortable.  Terry makes great use of his two cast-iron skillets in the mornings to build custom-order breakfasts.  We variously sampled french toast, pancakes, eggs, moose sausages (Terry's little joke name for pork sausages), fruits, and cereals in the morning...and enjoyed fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies in the evenings.  The other guests were equally enjoyable.

One of two lounging areas in Denali Dome Home.

Having arrived at DDH around 1PM or so we quickly got settled into our room and then piled back into the van - this time with M driving - to find some lunch.  We ended up at 49th State Brewing Company, which was nearby.  Their sister restaurant is the Denali Salmon Bake at Glitter Gulch, but Ann and Terry had warned us that the Salmon Bake wasn't getting good reviews.  The Brewing Company had a fun vibe to it - I grabbed a couple of photos of some of the decor.  A few folks tried one of the house-brewed beers...and our son R had the house root beer.  Most of us had fish-based meals, with one mac and cheese thrown in, too.  We were hungry and the food didn't disappoint!

Part of the decor at 49th State Brewing Company.  This was in the upper corner nearest our table.

From lunch we drove over to Park Headquarters because we wanted to catch the 4PM presentation at the Dog Kennel.  Terry had advised us to park at the back end of the parking lot and pick up the trailhead for the (short) walk to the kennels.  Here, the rangers discussed why they make such extensive use of dogs in the park, and they had the dogs pull a sled around a short demo course.  They had a relatively inexperienced lead dog at the front and she showed it by veering off-course at one point as she got distracted by the crowd.  That was a great demonstration of how they have to train dogs for different roles.  The whole thing took about 25 minutes including Q&A and was quite interesting. After the presentation we were encouraged to walk around the kennel area an interact with the dogs.

The ranger host at the Denali Dog Kennel presentation.  The dogs have just completed their sled pull and are starting to play with chew toys that are being handed out.

 

A few of the sled dogs at the Denali NPS dog kennel.

From there we drove over to the Visitor Center and spent about 30-40 minutes walking around the two-level display area.  There's a lot of good displays here with "just enough" text to keep you informed without boredom.

On the way to the visitor center each day we kept coming across two orphaned moose calves.  The mother had been (illegally) shot and killed by someone unknown about two weeks previously and the rangers were trying to figure out how to capture the calves in order to ship them to a wildlife care facility.  If they couldn't capture the calves it was expected they wouldn't survive through the upcoming winter. (Note: D had a business trip to India about two weeks after we got back from the Alaskan trip. The hotel delivered USA Today each morning, and I happened to notice one day that the news blurb for Alaska reported that rangers at Denali had managed to capture the calves.)

The orphaned moose calves hanging around the entrance to Denali National Park.  We saw rangers out here every time we passed by, directing traffic and making sure no one got too close.

Finally, we did a nice little loop trail walk that took us about 45 minutes or so.  We started at the Taiga trailhead located just across the road bordering the parking lot next to the Visitor Center (the RED trail on the map in the links at the right), then turned left on the Rock Creek Trail (blue trail), before turning left again on the Meadow View Trail (black dashed line), and finally left again on the Roadside Trail (yellow trail) to get back to the parking lot.

This is the view from along the Meadow View Trail.  Gorgeous scenery!

Back at the car we headed over to Prospector Pizza for dinner.  This is a VERY busy place.  It took us about 45 minutes to get seated, and then dinner itself was leisurely - it took about 2 more hours.  D chatted with our waitress and, commenting on her Slavic-like accent, learned that she was from Bulgaria. As D managed some staff in Sofia and had traveled there recently he was surprised to find out that he had heard of her hometown - she was from Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria. We got back to DDH about 10PM tired but satisfied.

W, M, and D wait for wives to finish shopping at the gift stop next to Prospector's Pizza.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 (at Denali)

D, E, R, and A started this day off with a move to another room at DDH.  When we booked (and grabbed that last three rooms available) Ann had let us know that this would happen.  The room we were first booked into was already booked for the second night of our stay so we were moved to another room.  Our first room had a sauna in it, so I'm guessing that this was the attraction that caused someone else to book it.  We actually liked our 2nd room more, so it all worked out OK.

After another tasty breakfast we headed over to Miner's Market and Deli, which was less than a mile from DDH.  Here we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the fridge and added some bags of chips, granola bars, etc. to make our own bag lunches for our shuttle bus trip into the park.  The shuttles were running late and when we got there for our 10A shuttle the 930A group was still waiting.  Our bus came in about 10:10A and we loaded up for our day with our driver Ken, from Kentucky.  As per the recommendations from Ann and Terry (and backed up by Cruise Critic posters) we sat on the left hand side of the bus.

Ken was AWESOME!  Unlike the "official" brown narrated tour buses, the green shuttle buses do not promise any narration.  However, Ken kept up a steady stream of commentary and basically gave us a full tour for the price of a shuttle.  I've read of others who had shuttle drivers who did little more than drive, so we got really lucky.

The day was a bit overcast which did nothing to detract from the beauty of the scenery...but does mean that our photos fail to really do justice to what we saw.  The bus makes bathroom stops about every 75-90 minutes. The windows on the bus did have a tendency to fog up pretty regularly. The bus had paper towels available, but had we anticipated this problem we would have actually brought a cloth towel with us to wipe down the window more regularly.

Our shuttle bus (foreground) at the first bathroom stop.  That's our driver, Ken, standing at the doorway to the bus. There were usually buckets of water and squeegees available at the rest stops so folks could wash down the outside of their windows if they wished to do so.

At this time of day (it was about 1130A or so at our first bus stop) it was a bit damp out.  To the left you can see the bathrooms located here.  In the background you can see that a tan narrated tour bus has also arrived.

Here was a cow with two calves caught on the road between two buses.  She was clearly trying to find a safe way off the road, but this section featured a cliff wall on our right hand side and a sheer drop off to our left.  The buses both remained stopped to give the animals a chance to make choices.

The cow finally decided to attempt to move along the steep drop immediately to the left of our bus.  The river is probably about 100' below the road.  Although not obvious in the photo, the land drops sharply just 1 to 2 feet beyond where the animals are currently walking.  The cow was carefully selecting where to go, no doubt evaluating whether her calves would be able to safely follow her.

This panoramic photo attempts to capture the amazing vista of Polychrome Pass. 

One of the most elusive photos of our trip: Sixteen year old R, who normally would shy away from the camera.  Mom E is to his right.  I ambushed him here.

Our only bear sighting of the whole trip.  I rushed this photo just before he moved to his left, behind the bush in the foreground.

At the Eileson Visitor Center (our turn-around point) Ken announced that he'd be starting his return trip in about 45 minutes.  Because the day was a bit cold and dreary we decided not to take any of the hiking trails around the VC so were able to return with Ken without having to worry about securing spaces on other buses departing later.  However, had the weather been nicer we would have stuck around.  Frankly, we were surprised that "our" bus would only stop for 45 minutes.  It would seem to make so much more sense for each bus to wait at least 75-90 minutes in order to allow "its" passengers more time to explore while still providing them with guaranteed return seats.  I'm sure it all works out in the end...but a surprise.  We did lose two passengers at Eileson: a couple of bikers came up on our bus and were met by a friend (who biked in from Wonder Lake).  Together, they were planning to bike out of the park during the rest of the day - a journey of 66 miles.  Ah, to be younger!

We explored the (small) Visitor Center, which did include a nice picture window for photographing The Mountain.  Of course, we couldn't see Denali through the overcast.  That viewing would have to wait for another day.  The VC does have a nice scale model of the area, showing various paths to scale the mountain.

 

An unusual item is on display outside the VC - a set of moose skulls with interlocked horns.  Apparently two males fighting things out in a mating ritual got tangled with one another and eventually died in tandem.

Following a long day on the bus we were ready for a quiet dinner, and (on recommendation from Terry and Ann) we went to the Black Diamond Grill.  As this was out near DDH and not Glitter Gulch it wasn't as busy as all those places in walking distance of the major hotels.  The portions were HUGE, and quite good.  The menu sample linked at the right is representative - it doesn't include the BBQ pork ribs I had which were among the best I've EVER had.  Only later did I determine we'd been a few hundred feet from another geocache that I could have grabbed without any problems!

After a long day it was back to DDH for our final night before a long train ride to Anchorage and meeting up with the rest of our traveling circus.

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

Read More

2016 Alaska: Day 1 and 2: SJC to Fairbanks and Train to Denali

Having decided that we were going to go to Denali we next decided that our best approach was to fly into Fairbanks (rather than Anchorage) and work our way south via Alaska Railroad. Cruiseline-sponsored landtours often visit Fairbanks and all of them appear to follow the same basic itinerary. They go to Gold Dredge 8 and take a steamboat tour. Those held absolutely no interest for us. Looking at TripAdvisor for other ideas ultimately led to the conclusion that, at least on this trip, Fairbanks was going to be nothing more than an airport and overnight stay for us.

So, where to stay?  Ideally we'd find some place reasonably priced with decent airport and/or Alaska RR shuttle service, as well as a restaurant or two within walking distance where we could get dinner.  Our 8 hours of Delta flights from San Jose via Seattle would put us into Fairbanks around 2PM.  That would give us some time to get to wherever we planned to stay and decompress a bit before dinner - but we didn't plan to fit in any organized activity on our travel day.  Again, TripAdvisor to the rescue and we settled on Best Western Plus Chena River Lodge.  At the time, this was the #2 property rated on TA (out of 24).  They offered an airport shuttle (we called them on arrival and they sent a couple of taxis to get us within just a few minutes), included breakfast, and were within walking distance of both a run-of-the-mill restaurant (Brewster's) and a nicer restaurant (Chena's Alaskan Grill).

For our flights we all suffered with Delta.  Overall we were really frustrated with them.  We suffered MULTIPLE rebookings (prompted by them, not us) in the weeks prior to the flight.  Overall, our group of eleven had four different outbound flights from 3 different states, and three of them experienced delays of 2+ hours on day of flight, and two of those placed connecting flights at serious risk of being missed.  Those of us coming up from San Jose ended up having to hustle through SeaTac airport to make our Fairbanks flight rather than enjoy a leisurely lunch as planned due to the lateness of our departure from San Jose.  Major hassles all around.  Next time: Alaska Air.  They were more expensive, but the hassle of Delta just wasn't worth it!

The Fairbanks airport is small and simple: I'm not sure there was more than one baggage carousel.  I did notice bus drivers from Royal Caribbean, HAL, and Princess all waiting with appropriate signs upon landing.  We. of course, were doing our own thing so retrieved our bags and were at the hotel within about 20-25 minutes of landing.

As it was the night of Game 7 of the NBA Finals and our Golden State Warriors were trying (unsuccessfully, it would turn out) to repeat as champs we decided we'd walk to Brewster's for dinner as we knew they'd have the game on TV.  Brewster's was a bit warm, but otherwise pleasant.  For those interested, we passed a large Fred Mayer store (this is like a Walmart) on the way - this is a place you could pick up pretty much any missing item.  On the way back my family indulged my interest in geocaching.  There was a simple cache hidden just behind the hotel that we grabbed post-dinner.

The most striking aspect of Fairbanks was that this was our first exposure to the long hours of summer daylight this far north.  On that particular day Fairbanks had 20:54 between sunrise and "sunset".  I put the latter in quotation marks because it was never really dark at all that day.

The following morning we had a quick breakfast at the hotel.  We've stayed at Best Western Plus hotels before and the breakfast selection here was pretty typical: hot/cold cereal, scrambled eggs and sausage, make-your-own-waffle and toast, and some fruit.  Overnight, a busload of tourists had appeared so the 5-6 tables were in use and the room was REALLY crowded.

We hopped into two more cabs to get to the train station.  We had the front desk make arrangements the prior night and had been told that the hotel did not cover the costs to the train station (only to/from the airport).  On the morning of transport, however, the cab drivers came to the front desk and got vouchers from the hotel staff, so we got free rides in the end.  Time to the train station was 10-12 minutes.  On the recommendation of the hotel, we arrived about 20 minutes before departure time which turned out to be just about perfect.  Gave us time to check our baggage, and run through the model train layout at the station before boarding.

I had booked regular train cars for this one (Adventure Class) and we were initially assigned to Car C.  The train layout was A and B=Goldstar, C, D, E=Adventure (with D including the shared dome), and F=the private Wilderness Explorer car.  Car F was off-limits to those in A-E.  The Fairbanks-Denali leg apparently isn't as popular as legs south of Denali, so D and E were empty...which turned out to be a blessing.  Here's something I never saw anyone on Cruise Critic mention: Cars D&E are older than A-C, having been built in the 50's...when rail travel was more luxurious.  The seats in D&E are WAAAAAAY more comfortable, have more leg room, have foot rests...and also have better window views.  Having been encouraged by the conductors to explore and freely change seats, we made this surprising discovery and moved our group of 8 into the front of car D...where we enjoyed a private section of 16 seats to ourselves for the entire journey!  One of the conductors congratulated us - he mentioned that he loved it when folks made use of these seats when otherwise unoccupied.

A, E, M, C in our original seats in Adventure Class Car C.  Note how close together the rows are, and see how the bottom of the window pane is level with A's eyes.

A, R, D, C, M in Adventure Class Car D.  The seats are much nicer leather cushion bases, and there's a ton of legroom.  You can't see the multi-position footrests, but they're there.  You can recline about 75 degrees and still not get in the way of the seat behind you. Also note how A's eyes are well above the bottom of the window pane, even when he has reclined back a bit.

For anyone considering GoldStar seating for Fairbank to Denali, my recommendation is to not bother.  This section of the railway was mostly permafrost forest, which isn't very scenic.  (BTW: if you, like us, plan to take 2+ Alaska RR trips, here's a game you can play: count how many times one of the on-board guides explain what permafrost is.  Do NOT turn this into a drinking game - your liver won't appreciate it.  <g>)   The side of the train you sit on doesn't appear to matter.  This seems to be true of the entire Denali Star route (Fairbanks to Anchorage) as well as the Coastal Classic route (Anchorage to Seward).

A family of Trumpeter Swans seen from the train on the way to Denali.

A party of rafters on the Nenana River, as seen from the train.  The conductor mentioned that this was a popular activity of visitors to Denali.

Thanks for reading!  

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

Read More