The Land of Entrapment: Alaska

Well, we’re back from our trip to the vastness that is Alaska. It was a great trip and Mother Nature was surprisingly cooperative. On Monday, we flew into Anchorage and checked into a very small, but cute room at a bed and breakfast on a lake. That evening, we took a walking tour of downtown Anchorage with me serving as a tour guide (with help from Frommer’s). I can only say that as I consider what I should be when I grow up, tour guide isn’t in the cards. Even D. lovingly pointed out that I was a horrible ambassador to downtown Anchorage. I would walk up to a building and say, “Well, this is the old courthouse. I don’t really know anything about it.” That was if I could find the place. We ended the tour at a bar called “Darwin’s Theory” where the locals seemed QUITE skeptical of us despite our best efforts to look like locals. We then took in a movie that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone that doesn’t like really inappropriate and overly graphic movies. In my defense, it was the only movie showing at a movie house/restaurant/pub that had great reviews. Here’s us beside some (???) building on our walking tour that had totem poles…

On Tuesday, we took the 4.5-hour scenic drive up to Denali National Park. Fall has arrived in Alaska and the colors were quite beautiful. Since we forgot binoculars, we stopped at a Wal-Mart in the town of Wasilla (don’t judge, I didn’t know a Target was one mile down the road). For those of you interested, Wasilla is the town where John McCain’s shocker of a running mate was a city council member & mayor before becoming governor of Alaska. To gauge size, I would guess the town has about three stoplights. We spent our two nights in the Denali area at a neat inn on a lake. The views were fantastic the whole time although Mount McKinley didn’t come out to play due to overcast skies. Regardless, we saw moose, grizzly bears, black bears, caribou, dall sheep and a variety of birds. They call moose, bears, caribou and dall sheep the “Big Four” to view in Denali, so I guess we were lucky. We took two intense, but gorgeous hikes (I swear we gained at least 1700 feet in elevation, so they were quite steep) and really enjoyed the quiet. I would say Denali is probably the most “natural” national park since they have taken great strides to keep development out. On our last morning in Denali, we went rafting in glacial run-off. They say that means the water was on a glacier within 24 hours of our raft trip. (AKA extremely cold water.) Shortly after, we headed back to Anchorage for a short stop-over before the next leg of our trip. Here’s a picture of us in the park… They tell me that Mount McKinley is somewhere behind the clouds. I will believe it when I see it!