ALASKAN LAND TOUR FROM THE ISLAND PRINCESS
This five day tour, starting in Whittier and ending in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, includes an air transfer and three long train rides.
July 17th, Saturday: Passengers were transferred by coach from Whittier to Anchorage (2 hrs.), then took an Alaska Airlines flight to Fairbanks (1 hr). From the air we saw some of the wild fires that have been plaguing Fairbanks this summer. The air on the ground had a distinct smoky scent. Many locals told us we were lucky to have missed the really bad days two weeks before, when everyone was wearing surgical masks. The temperature was 88 degrees (F) when we landed, so much for the cool northwest.
We transferred from the airport to the Fairbanks Princess Lodge for a two night stay. We were given an envelope on the bus with our schedule and room key. This was neat, no lines to wait on, and our luggage was already in our rooms when we arrived.
This was to be repeated at each city on the tour. Nice preparation on the part of Princess Tours.
July 18th, Sunday: At 8:30am the "City of Gold" tour took us through an old gold mine, where panning is still done by tourists. This is a good place for souvenirs and the tour included complementary hot chocolate, coffee and freshly baked cookies for the weary gold miners. At 1:30pm we boarded a three deck paddlewheel for the "Riverboat Discovery Tour." There were several stops where natives shared and demonstrated their culture; we saw Iditarod Champions with their dog training farms, and samples of local huts and homes. This was a wilderness ride that Disney would have appreciated because of its authenticity. We even watched a native Eskimo (Inupiat) filet a salmon for preserving.
July 19th, Monday: We placed our luggage outside by 5:30am, transferred to the railway depot at 7:15am and boarded the Midnight Sun Ultra Dome at 8:15am. If this sounds early, just remember most of us were easterners used to DST, so this was like 12:15pm to us. Up to this point Fairbanks had been flat land, now we started a 4.5 hrs train ride through miles and miles of tundra with scrub like trees (low willows, birch and alder, plus the miniature scrub black spruce). Then the train went into a river bed and through canyons, tunnels and over trestles and into the mountains. Always with delightful changing vistas.
We arrived in Healy and were transferred by bus to the Denali Princess Lodge, with its Old Hickory Furniture (Shelby, Indiana) This lodge and its surroundings are extraordinarily beautiful: many gigantic begonias, dahlias and marigold grown so lushly by the long, long summer days. Look out for the giant cabbages.
Monday afternoon we took a three hour "Natural History Tour" with guide Josh Becker through the taiga (forest) and the tundra and up into the mountains to Inspiration Point (also called Primrose Ridge). From this site one can see 360 degrees panorama of mountain peaks. Fantastic! This is where the very spiritual natives sit to communicate with their spirit friends. An Athabaskan native woman spoke of their matriarchal society and subsistence hunting. The roads are lined with fire weed a beautiful lavender spiked wild flower.
Wild life is scarce here, but we did see the Alaskan State bird the ptarmigan, to be exact we saw the whole family: a hen, a rooster and several chicks. They look like bantam chickens small and brown with a more colorful rooster, who fiercely defends the family. We saw white Dall sheep with their curled horns and a caribou that walked across the scrub straight toward the bus. Josh stopped and warned the passengers to be quiet. This beautiful animal walked along side the bus and strode to the front of it and then turned and slowly walked back. All the while cameras were clicking. We were all amazed by the huge rack of antlers.
Denali National Park, we were told is the size of Massachusetts, with more then 160 species of birds, 37 species of mammals and hundreds of species of plants. We found that looking for wildlife there is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Imagine seeking less than 350 grizzly bears or 100 wolves in six million acres. Both moose and caribou number less than 1,900 each. This harsh climate is not conducive to either flora or fauna. If you yearn for wildlife, then you should book special tours which bring the visitors to specific areas like Brooks River Lodge in Kanai National Park, where bears congregate to catch the salmon swimming upstream, as shown in National Geographic films. We never even saw the official Alaskan pollinator the mosquito (Skeeter), since this year there has been very little rain.
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