Chapter 2 - Respect the Tundra and Taiga

Let me tell you in advance that this trip was successful and there were no knee dislocations or such kind of incidents involved.

We reached Anchorage around 8 pm in the evening and went straight for dinner after the 11 hr long flight from Boston. It was a small Italian place, mostly occupied by very old people. For several minutes I kept wondering if we chose the wrong place for vacation. I ordered  a salad and Saswat ordered some pesto pasta. Food was really good and so was the price. That small salad plate was 15 dollars. I checked it to be a $$ priced restaurant in Yelp. Turns out $$ in Alaska is actually $$$ otherwise. And I do not blame them. This is their peak season and it's all downhill after that. 

So, we had our dinner and checked into our B&B. It was a very small but really charming Bed and Breakfast lodge. The lodge had a wooden cabin like setting; the ones that you find in a forest area and the owners did a darn good job of decorating the entire place with local craft like bear skins, giant bear statues, pictures of eagles and fish. The glass coffee table was assembled on top of two small tree trunks. It looked very pretty. The main door opened into the kitchen area and I quickly navigated through all the food items that were neatly organised for easy access for their guests. We went to sleep immediately but realized that its still very bright outside and it was 10 pm already. We closed all the blinds and drew the dark blue curtains to the floor to prevent any light entering our room.
                                                 

The good thing about Alaska in the summer is that there is a lot of daylight. Even after sunset, which usually happens around 1 am, yes you read it right..there is still light outside. So people like me who like to sleep late into the morning, do not have to get up early during a trip. There is always light at the end of the night to finish all your sight-seeing ambitions for the day. But the body clock was acting up and by 6:00 am, we both were wide awake. So I quickly went to the kitchen to brew some fresh coffee and toast some 100% whole wheat bread. When there is still the chance to eat the healthy stuff, just eat it. You never know when you will be surrounded by wilderness in such a place and the only thing to eat is cheese blend pizzas, that too after driving quite some distance. There were hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator, freshly squeezed orange juice, marble cake, oats, protein bar, 2% reduced fat milk, yogurt; everything that I like to see in our kitchen on a typical non-cheat day. The items were stacked in abundance and I smartly packed a couple of them for our onward journey to Denali National Park, our first point of interest.

    Saswat doing the dishes after breakfast.

By 8:00 am we were ready to leave. When we were checking out from the lodge, many other guests had woken up and were serving themselves breakfast. I even gave a slightly older couple, a tour of the kitchen. They were visiting Alaska for a month and were headed to a place called Borrow, quiet far from Anchorage to see the Arctic ocean.

Soon we were on Alaska Highway 3, cruising at 70 miles/hr to Denali. Saswat was looking out for cops on the road but surprisingly there were none. "A man is happy when there are no cops on the road". Those watching Game of Thrones will get this joke. It was a 4 hr drive to Denali National Park and we already completed 2 hrs of it and I was not at all amazed. The scenery from our work place to the apartment is more dramatic than what I was witnessing. Honestly, I got a bit bored. Luckily, Pandora was still working and we had some good music to keep us entertained. I must tell that the snacks I packed from the B&B lodge came quite handy. When I am bored and not driving, I have this tendency to snack. Only this time, I tried not to buy chips and other not-so-healthy snack items. When I am driving, I instantly feel sleepy. So I try to entertain myself in the best possible way. I will spare you those details. Luckily, Saswat finds driving therapeutic and just can't get enough of it.

It was more than a couple of hours when we slowly started noticing the landscape around us changing.  Pandora was giving up on us, and soon we were surrounded by mountains from all sides. We could see Mt. McKinley, the snow capped mountain from far. Mt McKinley is the highest mountain top in North America with an elevation of 6190 m above sea level. Mt Everest, the highest peak in the world is 8848 m above sea level. You will be surprised to know that the climb to Mt. McKinley is not that technical and people can do it in 10-15 days while Mt Everest takes on average two months. Cost wise, climbing Mt. McKinley is way way way cheaper than Mt. Everest. 

     On our way to Denali National Park

We reached Denali National Park around 1:00 pm. We directly went to the visitors center to discuss some logistics with the park ranger. What we learnt is that Denali is a trail-less park, which meant you can hike anywhere. Anywhere?, that seemed a bit scary, given all the human-bear interactions happening within the park recently. We had lunch, completed some simple trails and then boarded a shuttle bus for a 6.5 hr tour of the park. Private vehicles are not allowed beyond a point inside the park and so we thought it was the best option at hand.

More information on Toklat Shuttle bus: http://www.reservedenali.com/play/shuttle-buses/toklat.aspx

The shuttle ride was a fun experience. Our guide was a young guy who was spending his 13th summer in the park. He was a pro and was riding his bus on those rough dusty terrain through the steep mountains pretty confidently . Some roads in the mountain  were so narrow and steep that no two vehicles could cross each other at the same time. Our job as the riders of this Toklat shuttle bus was to watch out for wild life in that wilderness. We also got instructions of how to signal other passengers and our guide to stop the shuttle if we spot a wildlife. The protocol is the one you may be  familiar with if you were a wing man/woman for your friends at a certain point in your life....Check out..pretty boy at 9 o'clock. The reasoning behind following this protocol is also the same, you do not want to scare away the spotted entity.

I was hoping that in that 6.5 hrs ride, I would get to play that protocol one way or the other. Unfortunately, the closest that we got to any wildlife in that entire ride was a falcon. I was disappointed. But overall the trip was worth it. We saw lots of forests, white spruce trees, glacial river beds, exquisite snow-clad mountain ranges and experienced the wilderness of this place in the most safest way. We got ample opportunities to take pictures and soak in the beauty that this place had to offer.

     Shuttle stopping at Polychrome outlook for 15 minutes for pictures.

      Toklat Glacial River bed

Our tour ended at around 11 pm in the night. The sun was just starting to set in the mountains on our way back to Talkeetna where we had booked the Princess Wilderness Lodge for two nights. In my lifetime, I had not seen such a beautiful midnight ever. It was simply majestic. The sun was playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds, and the snow-clad mountains were glistening like gold that night. It felt very unearthly to me. As we drove through these big surrounding mountains, glowing in its full glory now, I felt how tiny and insignificant our problems are in comparison to these mountains. That's when I realized the power of mother nature and the respect that these forests and mountains deserve from us. 

     Sun set at around midnight

We reached Princess Wilderness Lodge at around 1:30 am in the morning. Without wasting a single second, we jumped into our bed and slept off like babies.