Seward and Glacier cruise - Alaska part 7

Last 2 days was a part of the great glacier experince. With the book milepost in hand, we started our journey from Anchorage to Seward in the Kenai Fjords. The town of the famous exit glacier and from where the glacier cruises started. A few other places near Achorage from where you could take a cruise were Whittier, Portage, Prince William Sound, Homer etc. But we had heard a lot about this drive and train ride and were looking forward to do the same. We rented a hotel in downtown Seward. We had plans to hike Exit glacier one day and do the glacier cruise the other day. Exit glacier hikes is one of the best hikes. If you ever go to Alaska and plan to visit glaciers do not miss this one. Also, if you plan to skip Denali, I have heard that the Kenai peninsula and Kenai Fjords national park are one of the best parks there. A lot of tourists have now explored more of Alaska and prefer the Fjords for there are more things to do there.
We booked our tour via Major Marine tours which again had a 2 for 1 coupon in the Alaska tour savor coupon booklet. They also had some excellent reviews, ranger aboard for information, free coffee and a great meal and desert. It was very well organized with a lot of staff to help with sea sickness, medicines, attending the sick and keeping children busy with some national ranger programme. Though we had taken our sea sickness medicines my husband had a tough time keeping his food down along with a few other passengers. He enjoyed the glaciers as the boat stopped around it for food and refreshments for about an hour. Though a lot of people in reviews said they were not able to see much wildlife we saw balooga whales, baby whales, puffins, seals, sea otters etc. We even saw glacier "calving" in a few places. Though the glaciers appeared small the sound of calving made us realize the size and intensity of them. Checkout the pictures below of glaciers from various point and from cruise:

photo: Atop Alyeska resort via tram. There is a very steep hiking trail to go down from atop Alyeska resort if you have enough time energy or you are staying at the resort. or you could go back via tram.

 photo: On the way to Portage glacier

photo: animal sancutary

 photo: glacier cruise photos

photo(top): holgate glacier

photo(top): Ayalik Glacier: Close up with of this cave in glacier that looked like a small opening from ground must be about 50 feet high.

While on the way and back from Seward, we visited the animal sanctuary, the seward aquarium.
Heres a photo of the famous puffin, which can dive in miles and miles in chilly water for food and can walk on water :)

Matanuska Glacier climb - Alaska part 6

The next day had another exciting adventure in store. We had booked our Matanuska Glacier hike through Mica Guides website in advance. Matanuska glacier is the biggest land accessible glacier in Alaska. So we wanted to see it from as near as possible and what could be nearer than a hike on it! The drive to it was another gorgeous two hour drive from Anchorage. It was a very different terrain as compared to the Denali drive. We reached the Mica guide site at about 10am. We were scheduled for a hike at 11am. I was not keen on doing the glacier climb but was satisfied with just the hike, since climb looked scary. As I insisted my husband to do the glacier climb, since he craves for adventure, I saw two kids age 9 and 12, ready to do the climb with their parents. That gave me the necessary nudge and we switched from a hike to climb. To this day I am glad I did! It was an experience of lifetime. It was fun, it was strenuous, it stretched and tested your limits. But the feeling of climbing to the summit was all worth it.

We were given all the gear, the leg covers so as not to scratch ourselves with our own spikes. The ice climbing spiky boots called crampons, the helmet, the axe. With all gear worn and ready to go, the team drove us to the nearest glacier entry. It was accessible from a private road and the house that owned the access collected a fee. Lucky them!. We got off the jeep and started our way across the glacier, following our peppy guides. We stepped in their steps and followed the trail to the nearest smallest ice peak. Our learning lessons began and so did my doubts about signing for the climb. The first lesson was how to use crampons to  climb vertically. How to swing the foot and fix the crampon in ice and try to stand on it as if it was a support step. Theory easy, practical...well! to say the least...after I climbed halfway on the ice, i began to reconsider whether I should be doing this for the whole day. Half way through the climb, my legs screamed and once in a while I just had to hang by the rope and take time off. I felt bad for the trainers who were holding us up by pulling at the other end of the rope and shouting constantly "you can do it!" I gave up halfway through it. The easiest climb was for 2 kids who were also taking lessons with us, they climbed like pros. To say the least I wished to be a kid again if only for a day. While practicing climbing using the ice axe and without ice axe, we moved to our first real glacier climb. After that the climbs started getting a lot easier than the first one and till the end of the day, when we came to the toughest one, I was glad with everyone else that we had such a great fruitful and fun time! On the last glacier climb, we even saw and heard a big part of glacier go down in a moment making a big bang sound. It looked like standing in movie ice age or experiencing the movie vertical limit as the guides called it. We saw a lot of ice caves, streams and drank water by extracting it through ice using a tool.
So if you plan to hike a glacier, I would really recommend climbing one rather than hiking! Its a once in a lifetime experience. Also, don't forget your goggles and sun screen. Though I had the goggles, i had no sun screen. I had a bad tan and a sun burn next day. Can you imagine getting that kind of burn with reflection of sun on ice? crazy!
We came back by dusk and searched for some good heavy dinner. we needed comfort food and craved Indian. Lucky to find one Indian restaurant in Anchorage, we headed straight to eat and with stomach full, crashed in hotel after a memorable ice climbing day.

Denali hike, dog sledge and other - Alaska part 5

For dinner we ate some mexican, a togo from a thai cart, some ice cream from mom and pop shop. These shops and carts spring up in Denali for 3-4 months of tourism that the park gets. The rest of the year they either disappear or lock down and continue their business in rest of Alaska like Anchorage or Fairbanks. On the next day after a sledge dog tour, some hike and trying to see Mt Mckingley one last time, we headed back to Anchorage. We wanted to do the ATV but did not have enough time for that and assumed the water was too cold for any rafting. I felt sad to leave the grand beautiful Denali. In those last few days, knowing so much about Denali, its habitat and hiking its terrains, made me feel i was home. We stopped on our way back taking in as much as we could with us as memories. It was a pretty rainy day. We reached home around 7, checked into our hotel and headed straight to "Moose's Tooth" for some great pizza!
Here are some photos of the hikes, the wilderness express and the quaint Denali rail station amongst the hills and famous The dog sledge; the only means of winter transport.

Denali tour and ranger hike - Alaska part 4

Denali Bus Tour
We started early next morning at 5:30 to take a bus tour of Denali. Yes 5:30am! We were not feeling tired, very well rested, just rushing with the breakfast and to top it someone at the hotel informed us, that you don't get food in the park. You have to pack and take it for day trip. The restaurant had a facility to preorder lunchbox had we known and requested the night earlier. Since,we did not have that option, we rushed to our hotel vending corner and picked up whatever fruits and dry sandwiches we could get. 2 turkey sandwiches, juices and cookies and apples. There were no veggie options other than a plain bagel. I am a vegetarian, unless there arises a dire need to eat anything else and today was one such day. Later in the day we realized there was a subway 1 mile around that area, but it would not have been open that early. Nevermind! we were already running to catch our park bus.
As we entered the park, it hit me that it was only 5:30 in the morning, the sun was up and behind the dark clouds, it looked like its going to rain crazily any moment but it dint and the whole atmosphere was so cool and calm as opposed to being windy the earlier day. The morning light lit up the forest in yellow and orange colors. The expanse of the forest made me feel so little and lost but at the same time happy to be away from everything. I felt content. I wish we had come a little before time and could have sit around the visitor center to enjoy the morning. Me and my husband ran to the bus and heard a few groans from the ranger about being nearly late, but all was good. We were on the bus now :) The ranger was awesome, very polite and very informative. And to top it did I mention these bus tours are free and a must do by everyone! Just book the tour online prior to the trip. We took the wonder lake trip but went only till Eilson center. There was a complete 12 hour tour which went to Katishna, the last road accessible point in park and back.
Our ranger had been working in Denali park for about 20 years and knew every tiny detail.  And so our journey started with our awesome ranger on the 90 mile road of the park. She told us private vehicles were only allowed in first 15 miles of the park and there were many trails in that area, which set a plan for us for the next day. You could probably do bike from there, because I remember seeing a few bikers area beyond first 15 miles and you could definitely hop off a bus and hike and get back onto any another bus from anywhere on the road.

On our way in we first came across the dense vegetated Tiaga region, where we did have most of our moose sightings. Moose sightings are like deer sightings there. There are signs on road all over Alaska.

Followed by vast expanse of the grassy Tundra region were the grand mountains. The ranger spotted caribou, bears and most difficult to spot Dall sheep on the way. The daal sheep was perched so high up in the mountains, it was hard to see. Many tourists had binoculars or a powerful camera to view beers and Daal sheep. Since Tundra is a region of tiny grassland vegetation and no tall trees, we could see as far as the eyes could take us. We came across an area called the polychrome pass which was the most picturesque part in the park, with so many colors! The bus stopped at all the scenic areas giving us enough time to take in the beauty.

Range led hike
Next we reached the Eilson center. We were planning to go to the Wonderlake reflection pond next on our bus.The reflection pond at wonder lake is famous for the beautiful reflection of Mckinley it offers on a clear day. But since Mt Mckinley was not visible again that day, we decided against it. Instead we decided to do the 3 hour ranger led hike which started behind the Eilson center. It was about 2000 ft steep, and 2 mile long hike. It may not sound like a lot, but I was huffing and puffing all the way up. The ranger stopped every 10 minutes and explained to us about flaura and fauna, adaptation of animals to that habitat, animal safety protocols and even let us touch a lazy squirrel!. He said those were the laziest animals and easy food source in Denali. The hollow hooved animals like the dall sheep, caribou, moose etc adapted quickly to snow and did not need to go into hibernation. While animals such as the squirrel and bear go into a long winter hibernation. He explained that since there is ice just 3 feet below the ground even in summer in Denali, the tundra region does not sport tall tress but only shrubs that grow near to ground and have spread out roots. The bears ate nearly a million berries each day in summer and lived on squirrels for other times. He explained how you never run from a bear or fox because they would attack you considering you predator. But you can run as fast as you can from a moose or caribou :) He also talked about how far is a safe distance from animals. After that we were hoping we din't encounter any animal because with the steepness of hike, running was absolutely not an option.

As he explained to us about all this we reached the top. Even with all the excercise, swimming, cardio and weights I do all through the year, I was the last to reach the top huffing and panting. So its better never to overestimate your capacity. The view from above was gorgeous. Gorgeous is an understatement. Imagine climbing one of the mountains and getting a clear view on all sides of it. I also thought we might encounter a dall sheep because they lived so high up. But we din't!, maybe this mountain was just not high enough for them to escape from bears. Though the ranger did say that the dall sheep do wander to lower terrain once a while, but thats not very frequent. Check out the photos from the top.

After a few minutes of taking in the picturesque beauty of the place, we started our decent. Steep decents are also not easy, if you think, it would be a piece of cake as compared to the climb. They put too much pressure on the knees, so you have to stop once in a while to give your painful knees a break. To top it we saw a bear approaching towards us from the road after about half way through decent. The ranger explained that it will not take the bear more than a few minutes to reach us if he decides to charge. We waited patiently while the bear made his decision. Then the ranger asked us to start climbing back to the top as the bear started his uphill climb. The ranger said that since its the bears natural habitat, they try not to interfere in its natural habitat and shove it away unless they definitely know its closing in. And he asked us to keep quite since animals can hear from far away and he assured us the bear definitely knew we were near!.... So much for distance and steepness of climb, nothing seemed to be too difficult for the bear. He also contacted the visitor center below to inform them and other visitors and also asked them to keep an eye on the bear. Thankfully after about an hour, the bear decided to take a turn away from the trail and as we watched him disappear we started our decent. The ranger remained on radio call throughout to know if the bear changed direction again. In that little time of the hike, the weather changed from sunny to cold to rainy and back to sunny. As they say weather is quite unpredictable in most of Alaska.

Denali - Alaska part 3

Denali:

We made our way towards Denali by 5pm in the evening and it was getting cooler than expected. Anchorage luckily the earlier day was a good 70 degree plus and I assumed (which is a wrong thing to do in Alaska!) that the weather would be similar the next day. It started with a warm morning which beckoned to wear some summer clothing. Initially it felt like the perfect choice but I started shivering even in my layered clothing as the day progressed. Keep in mind that Denali is usually a few degrees about 10 degrees colder than Anchorage on any given day and so dress accordingly.
Soon, we came across a sign "scenic byway" and there is where I started to fall in love with the "magical mystical Denali". The drive from Anchorage to Denali was the most beautiful drive in the world. I cannot imagine how beautiful the yellow, orange hues might look there in fall.  They have the famous instructor led $4000 fall photography tours here for fall. You could see as far as your eyes could take you and at that point I just wanted to stop the car on roadside and sit in the middle of the road for forever. I wanted to take it all in and never let go of that picture, It was like I had found peace in the arms of nature. We stopped the car roadside and walked a couple of meters when we saw a few tourists trying to make their way to the river.

The rivers Susitna and Chulitna flowed beside the mountain and the road for as long as I could remember. The water so blue and still and fresh. There was no one else on the road. It was just the vast expanse of big mountains, the gorgeous river and one single road to destination from wherever we looked. It was like time came to a complete standstill. If I did ever go back to Alaska I would never want to miss this route and the glaciers ofcourse!

We stopped at nearly every location on the way to take pictures. The best part is all along the road, they had signboards stating "photostop 1000ft". Accolades for the state tourism who had done a great job at promoting tourism. As we stopped on as many photo locations we could and for road construction work (which they usually try to finish in 3 months of summer they get), our 4.5 hour journey extended to a nearly 12 hour one. We came to the Mt Mckinley north viewpoint and MtMckinley south viewpoints in the hope of getting a glimpse of the beautiful and highest snow covered peak in North America. But!, it wasn't a clear day. They say MtMckinley is visible on 20% of time the whole of summer and to a very few lucky visitors. Drat! we were out of luck, not only then but the whole of our trip. But that din't dampen our spirits, because the whole of Denali was stunningly and outrageously beautiful. Nothing can describe it. The images seem to be so ingrained in my mind that I can close my eyes and imagine being there. I did go back anyday at slightest opportunity.

Soon we reached around 20 miles from Denali park entrance and filled up gas full tank at the nearest and last gas station before we headed to entrance of park. Our hotel was just 1 mile outside the park and it was like all the tourists were living in that 1 mile radius of the park entrance. We parked our car and checked in, again saving money on hotel stay on "2 nights for cost of 1" deal from Alaska tour savor book. It was called the grande denali lodge hotel, atop the mountain with the most beautiful view of the area. I had heard a lot about the beautiful princess lodge in that area, but bookings there seemed to fill very fast. We booked in May for our August travel and din't get a booking with princess lodge. 

We had a hearty dinner atop at the hotel restaurant. The view as you can see above, again was gorgeous. My husband was trying to keep his balance by the railing trying to click some pictures as the sun set.

Since, the hotel faced the canyon directly, the canyon winds were making it hard to stand or walk without falling. The winds were raging at about 80 miles per hour. It was hard to hold foot on ground and to stay warm due to windchill, but there was a group of young girls who were just sitting out in porch wearing sweatshirts and chatting away to their hearts content. Below is the picture of the road, river and the canyon.

Denali bound - Alaska part 2

Day 1: We started early morning to drive to Denali via Talkeetna. We decided to have a quick breakfast and head right off. I was glad to find a McDonalds nearby because believe it or not there aren't many regular north american food chains there! Being from Atlanta my husband asked for the regular southwestern chicken burger and the person at order counter said you get that only in south :). He was from Texas! Thankfully he knew what we were talking about :) We asked him how he landed here and he said better paying job. I guess thats what most of the reason for people who relocated here was because of tourism being such an important industry. Second to it was to attend university. But each one of them had a love for Alaska!

• After that we made our way out of Anchorage. We had a GPS, but I was engrossed in a book called "Milepost by Kris Valencia" . I had read on online forums about this book and was very impressed how well the author had given mile by mile locations, viewpoints, food and gas station information. 
• A one big thank you to all the people on "travel forums and blogs" which made the Alaska trip planning so much easier and decisions so well formed. From driving instructions to cruises to what camera equipment and rains and cold gear to take, there was a lot of information everywhere. 
• Another big thank you goes to the "Alaska Tour saver book" which saved us a lot of time and money with great resources and deals on hotels, cruises, tours, train tickets, helicopter rides, rafting, kayaking, ATV, dog sledges, museums etc. It saved us a total of about 500-600$ on the trip and the savings could be easily anywhere between 1000-2000 for a longer trip.

We hadn't gone a few miles from Anchorage when the beautiful scenery began the unfold. Giagantic mountains and vast land covered with vegetation and pictursque scenes wherever we looked. The only words I could think of was in exclamations!! Every second the car moved forward, I yearned for the scenery just left behind and was excited in anticipation of what I would see next. My husband was driving and I was the official photographer. He enjoyed his drive while I toiled at getting good shots from a moving car. Its like I feel I missed so much and yet its like I saw so much that the camera could hardly capture.
We have had an opportunity to visit Yosemite and the great smokies living so near to the smoky mountains national park in the past. With Yosemite, I thought I had seen the most gigantic of the mountains, but this beats it. The mountains were tall and extremely pointy, they looked like the ones we drew in our drawing books when we were young :). I would say though that Yosemite is a beauty in itself and very different and  as compared to some parts here.

As we passed through beautiful green fields, lakes, streams and mountains, we reached a quaint small town called Talkeetna about halfway between Denali and Anchorage. We took a halt to check out the town and mainly for lunch. This is where we were to have a first look of the great mount Mckinley and take a helicopter ride to the mountain. But the flight seeing place told us the weather was not permissible to fly that day and neither was mouth Mckinley visible. We were not able to get the view of the mountain that day. With fingers crossed, We hoped back into the car and started back on our drive to destination Denali and on one of the most memorable drives till date!. Check out the pictures on next post!

A week in Alaska - Alaska part 1

If you want to plan Alaska trip this year, Its time to get your bookings rolling! "A week in ALASKA" - yes! Thats how much time we could get to vacation Alaska. My husband had always wanted to go there and no matter whereever we went on vacation, Alaska was always on his mind. Like a 5 year old kid who would become all excited at the topic of Disney. Well we have been to Disney as well for the kid within us :) but thats another blogpost. So we decided in January this year (2013) that we would go to Alaska. Something came up in March and by the time we decided to book our tickets it was mid-April. Mind you getting tickets and booking in mid-April for a holiday in May/June/July is not going to happen. There were too few hotels and bnbs to select from and many of the places and tours were showing full. That was a wake up call. In the coming week I researched on Alaska. I contacted a few friends, looked at their itineraries and then started a 5 day overwhelming google marathon to get all things together to update my husband over the weekend with a plan. 

That weekend we literally sat on the edge of our couch one whole day and did all the booking starting with airplane booking to hotels to a few tours. Tip: Do a quick check on availability of hotels or campsites, of places you want to visit before doing your plane bookings. Some 30% of bookings open 2 weeks before the actual trip date and so if you don't see any open spots you may call and want to ask about this option. We got a direct delta flight from Atlanta to Anchorage, woot! It was a 6.5 hours flight, but basically awesome because the return was a red-eye flight and no layovers! It was around $650 and we din't find a cheaper layover deal either. Our friends who were visiting end of August and September found better deals at around $400. I am guessing this is because the season starts to slowdown somewhere around August.

Trip options:
Below is the drive trip we did from Anchorage-Denali-Anchorage-Seward-Anchorage

One of the tourists we met on our way did Fairbanks-Denali-Anchorage-Seward-Anchorage (one way car rental)

Many itineraries included glacier bay national park, Juneau in their trip. They flew into Juneau. Took one day trip in glacier bay national park and then flew into anchorage to continue their drive trip.

Many others we met, mostly families with kids, did cruises starting in British Columbia(BC) or Anchorage. 

Aren't their too many great ways to visit this place!. We were quite excited. With recommendations from travel forums we realized that driving around the place was much easier and fun way to explore Alaskan interiors. So we rented a car for the whole drive and got ready for some adventure! Many larger families we met on trip had rented RV's instead too.

Checkout the google map for the drive below:

Alaska has it own regional time which is one hour behind pacific time, 4 hours behind Atlanta. We left Altanta at 4:30pm on Friday evening and landed at Anchorage at 7pm after a 6.5 hour flight. After renting the car and renting a GPS for the next 7 days we headed to our hotel. Our GPS brought from home loaded with Alaska maps did not work there, surprise surprise! GPS do not include Hawaii and Alaska maps! Though we tried to load Alaska Maps using some recommendations we found online, we were skeptical it will work. Its was 9pm by the time we checked in. The hotel restaurant was about to close. But courtesy hotel we found a great pizza place called the 'Mooses tooth' near our hotel which was open till 11pm. Well, the pizza place was not only open, but also bustling with people and having a wait time at 10pm in the night! oh well! did I say night? It was still broad daylight in Alaska, the sun had no indications of setting.  It was a great day in Anchorage with temperatures in upper 70's..aha! No jackets, no coats, I put on my fav dress and was ready to dine out. I was glad for the weather myself, but more glad for the people living there who were able to enjoy those few months of summer.

Btw, Here are some great breathtaking views of glacier from the plane. This is when I was fiddling away with the powers of Iphone camera and unhappy that our DSLR battery was in check-in luggage and we could not take a DSLR shot. Also, with us was a sweet grandma excited about traveling Alaska with her big family and craning her neck to get a glimpse of this wonder. We were ramdomly clicking photos and sharing them with her. Looks like one should never underestimate the powers of Iphone camera. Thanks to the great Steve Jobs :) Nothing in the trip could give us this wholesome ariel view of the terrain and glaciers of Alaska.