Joseph's Grand Adventures

My second day in the Denali area was rainy and cold — almost more like Juneau :P. The plan was to spend the morning exploring the park and the afternoon on the wilderness tour I had booked. Well, upon arriving at the park and deciding what to do, I learn that it was snowing in the interior of the park cancelling bus tours for the day. After going to the bus depot, I determined that, sure enough, my afternoon tour was cancelled. After some schedule rearranging, I changed my wilderness tour to the next day (Saturday). I then decided to hop one of the transit buses into the interior of the park to see what I could see just in case my tour for Saturday got cancelled. The interior of the park looked like a winter wonderland. (I was so glad I decided to go on the transit bus) There was probably close to 5 inches of snow on the ground, and it was in the beginning of September!! After riding the bus around, I arranged to be picked up early and spent time relaxing at my hotel area. I scrounged up some pizza and a warm fudge brownie with ice cream deciding to eat dessert first while enjoying the mountains.

Saturday brought some exciting adventures starting out with the nature tour. Heading out into the park on the tour bus to see what wildlife we could find, and boy did we find some! We ended up seeing Bears, Moose, Caribou, Dall Sheep, and Tarmigan. An even more exciting part was toward the end of the tour. We were about to cross over one of the bridges that we had earlier crossed coming into the park and we were stopped by a park ranger. There had been so much rain that the bank of the river near the bridge had washed out and they were not permitting buses to cross the bridge. We were stuck in the interior of the park! Our bus driver was kind enough to flag down a transport bus on the other side of the bridge and found a few seats for people that had other commitments. I was able to join that group as I had scheduled an ATV tour. Once we finally got back to the bus depot, I had calls to make to the ATV place and the ride transport company I was using, Thankfully I was able to get rescheduled to take my ATV tour that evening —– man, was that a fun time! We got to see a moose and a hare while out on the ATV’s and had some really amazing food! When I finally got back to the place I was staying, I was muddy, wet, and tired, but had enjoyed an amazing day!

Sunday brought watching church online and a call to the Alaska Railroad to upgrade my ticket to First Class for the Anchorage leg of the trip. Once church was over, I got packed up and headed to the train station. The trip to Anchorage from Denali on the train was a great experience. The food served on the train was very good. I spent time out on the observation platform and talking to some of the train staff. It was beautiful scenery the entire ride back; unfortunately, I didn’t see any wildlife. Arriving in the Anchorage depot, I got an Uber and headed to my lodging for the night for some much needed rest. The next morning brought some relaxing time before catching a flight back to Juneau.

I had such a memorable time visiting the interior of Alaska, and hope to visit again someday. Please let me know if you need any prayers, and I think there is a surprise coming down the pipeline for the next blog post!

P.S. There will be a post at a later date with more pictures.  My SD card reader broke so I have to get a new one before I can download pictures from my camera and GoPro.