Day 14, 7/4/2002, Sunrise 3:49am - Sunset 12:12am (still CRAZY); cloudy with occasional rain, sleet & snow changing to partly cloudy skies outside of the influence of Denali
Wildlife
beyond Denali National Park
I was intrigued by the fact that Aramark operated the Denali tour buses. I associate them with food concessions at sports venues and they operate the food services at our local university so I was not surprised at the box lunch offering on our tour. What was a surprise was the hot drinks offered at our turnaround rest stop. The water was heated by a system that parallels the bus' cooling system, circulating drinking water which is dispensed from an outside spigot at the back of the bus. Properly refreshed, we began our return trip.
Soon our driver was pulling up next to outbound buses and speaking in hushed tones about something ahead. He didn't say anything over the P/A for a while but after a bit he informed us that other buses had spotted a Grizzly in the area we were approaching. He told us where to look and 60 plus eyes scoured the area but no one saw a bear. Just as we were absorbing our disappointment a bear was sighted on the opposite side of the road. Almost as soon as we saw him he went out of sight into a small wash. The bus stopped and we all waited, quietly for him to reappear. When he did not reappear in a reasonable time our driver eased the bus forward and we were able to observe the bear, doing regular bear stuff apparently oblivious to us, about 50 yards off the road. We stayed there for several minutes until the driver decided it was time to let the other buses, which had by then lined up behind us, have a chance at our vantage point. This sighting changed the mood of the riders, we were now hungry to see additional species. We had seen 3 of the Denali big five and some of us were now chanting moose, moose! As we once again descended from the tundra into the taiga forest the occasional snows turned to sleet mixed with rain but our driver obliged us with our moose. We had been told how elusive and rarely seen the mostly nocturnal, Alaska Gray Wolves were but this did not stop some of the riders from picking up the chant again with cries of wolf, wolf. The wolf was true to his ascribed nature but we saw another moose before we left the park and drove past some kind of hubbub in a public area near the park entrance that the driver speculated was probably related to a wildlife sighting.
And so we dispensed with the yang of Denali and went back to the city like hustle, bustle of the lodge area where we had only to wait to re-board the train for our trip to Fairbanks. On the first part of our train journey we were seated at table #2 and tables were called to the diner from last to first so we were the last to go to lunch. Apparently all of us on this car were on the same itinerary as we were seated at the same tables with the same table mates (Jim & Alice from SD) as on yesterday's trip. Tonight they called us to the diner in reverse order so we were hardly seated and moving before we went down to dinner. It didn't take us long to leave the mountainous, Denali area. Soon after passing Healy we emerged into mostly flat lands. While dinning we were surprised to see a line of maybe 20 to 30 folks with their bare buttocks exposed toward the train. It wasn't "the Wallace salute from Braveheart" just the "Ferry Moon on the 4th"! Seems the whole town of Ferry comes out on the Fourth of July and 'moons' the Alaska Railroad tourist trains. Well, they can't have fireworks, it doesn't get dark! Anyway, it appealed to the Merry Prankster in me and I feel privileged to be one of the relatively few people in the world to have witnessed the "Ferry Moon".
We saw a remnant of the cold war DEW line (Distant Early Warning Radar), the river country community of Nenana and several moose during the remainder of our train ride to Fairbanks. As we had become accustomed, we disembarked the train and boarded buses. We were given a packet with our room assignment and key. At the hotel, we found our room containing all our proper luggage and began to relish all the room we had - this was the largest room we had stayed in during the entire trip! We watched fireworks on TV, there would be none in this part of the world besides, we had had quite a spectacular Independence Day! After retiring, we spent a while reminiscing on all we had seen and done over the past two weeks. It had truly been a wonderful trip for both of us.
Created on ... July 20, 2002