Adventurous Alaska!

Week 18+:
We are back! What an 'adventurous' baby mooning vacation! Our adventure started on day 1 & lasted until we got back home! This sure does qualify as one of those mega blog postings! Read on....

Long story short, day 1 @Anchorage began with a totally messed up car rental reservation. At 9 am, we were told that our car wouldnt be available until 10:30am. We had all our plans chalked out wrt. to the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel(the 2.5 mile largest tunnel in America) schedule and had to catch the 11am window to reach Whittier for our cruise.
We shelled out an extra $40 to rent the only available option(obviously with another car rental company) - a big Dodge SUV, when all we wanted was a Compact 2/4 seater!

Then, our 26 Glacier catamaran cruise at Whittier got cancelled(which happens only once every summer, & that day in 2006, had to be day 1 of our vacation!) due to high wind advisory alert from the US coast-guards.

The the very unpredictable, not-fall-yet-and-a-quite-rainy Alaskan weather caught us off-guard & we lost a day(couldnt visit Seward & Kenai Fjords).

That evening, we visited the Anchorage downtown Anchorage Convention
& Visitor’s Bureau Log Cabin. Here we took pictures of wildflowers, a two-ton jade boulder, and a sign pointing to the world’s great cities! We saw the Imaginarium, Egan Center & shopped for Alaskan souvenirs at the Polar Bear gift shop at 4th & F. Here is a map of the downtown.

Day 2: our car bookings with the damned original rental company led us:1.> loosing nearly 2 hours in the morning; 2.> desperately looking for a new car; 3.> a lot of anguish & frustration... We finally managed to get a compact(add extra $$s to that) car & finally made our way to Talkeetna for the Glacier landing plane ride.
I am going to send a long complaint to Fox car rentals & would advise all of you to stay away from them, especially if they have a local office(owned/operated by some mismanaged disorganized local rental company) in the town you are planning on visiting.FYI, we had booked our car more than a month before our trip!

By now, we were almost sure that our vacation was jinxed & due the weather, we would not be able to take the plane ride. The bad weather accompanied us till Wasilla when things started changing.
It was bright and sunny in Talkeetna. We were able to book the 1:30pm aerial tour with K2 aviation guys(I recommend them).
& what luck! Since a couple of days, there had been no glacier landings nor was Mt.McKinley(North America's tallest mountain- 20,320-foot tall ) visible. We got both!
Every passenger had a window seat. We had a wonderful plane ride and our pilot Bob did a great job @all landings & take-offs esp. glacier ones and also at narration throughout our flight. We could communicate/talk with him with our protective headset and two-way intercom system. No bumps, no turbulances(we skilfully flew between the clouds)- just a smooth ride all the way! All the planes are Ski-equipped for glacier landings and boots are provided(we didnt carry ours in the plane as we were not sure of glacier landing and so were soaked till our knees!)

The glacier landing is one of its kind. The Sheldon Amphitheater where we landed on the Ruth glacier is magnificent & so is Mt.Mckinley! Its an amazing feeling to be surrounded on all sides with these huge mountains(Alaskan range) & nearly up 2000-4000ft of snow.
& Tweetu enjoyed it the most! She(I address Tweetu as 'she' as TD always addresses Tweetu as 'he') joyfully 'danced'(read 'kicked') all throughout the ride!

Some Denali National Park Facts: 17% of the park's land is covered with glaciers. The deepest measured glacier is the Ruth Glaciers which is 3805 feet or 1160 meters. The surface ice of the Ruth Glacier moves about 3.1 feet or 0.95 meter per day.

Later, we headed towards Denali National Park and Preserve. It was raining all the way and we were a little skelptical about our Tundra Wilderness tour that we had booked to take the next day. We reached out cute little log-wood cabin @Parks Edge in Healy(a 2 hour ride from Talkeetna).
We fell in love with the cabin the moment we stepped in! Its ideal for 2 people...so cute and cozy. It was so romantic with the rains outside, coupled with two huge rainbows! It was nice and warm inside as we had the room heater going. The cabin had just enough space for a queen bed, a love seat & a small wash basin. The rest room had a seperate water heater & a cute stall shower. What else do you need?!

Can you imagine, we checked in at 9:30pm & it was still day-light outside! In Alaska, during summer, the sun sets at 11:30pm & the sun rise is around 5am ish!

Our 9 hour(its typically 8 hrs tour but weather permitted, it can get extented to an hr or more) Tundra Wilderness Tour began with a bus boarding at the Mckinley Chalet Resort at 5:40am. We were asked to carry a warm jacket, cameras & binoculars. Lunch was provided on the bus. It is not a typical hop-on-hop-0ff tour. There are only 6 reststops at beautiful vista points. The ride is not bumpy even though the bus travels on a gravel road after mile 14.
We were lucky, again! Our tour guide come bus driver Becky declared that it was one of those rare bus trips when the weather was spectacular & we were able to spot the great '5ives'(Brown bears, Caribous, Dall sheep, white Alpha female fox with her black cubs & the Moose) in large numbers, in a single tour! We also spotted the bald Eagle, long-tailed Jaeger,mountain Squirrel and the Alaska state bird - Ptarmigan. We travelled a few extra miles to Stony Hill Overlook at mile 62 to get a spectacular view of Mt. Mckinley where we were served hot Chocolate! It was a memorable tour. Later we left for our ride back to Anchorage.

We had re-scheduled our 26 glacier cruise tour for Monday when the weather was supposedly going to get better. & it did! The sun shined all the way from our Anchorage drive through south Seward, to Whittier, while we were on the cruise, until it was time for the Moon to shine!

& the cruise? 'Klondike Express' was the highlight of our vacation! People, dont miss this cruise for anything! Its a 4 hour cruise & from the time you set your foot on it, time just flies! We got more than we expected. Perfect weather, perfect top speed-40 knots- Catamaran, & those magificent glaciers. We spotted many Otters & large fishes doing a dolphin-act on the way through the Fjords.

Contd....