Our last day in Denali was great. The weather was clearing and the sun was breaking through the pea soup of the day before. After a hearty breakfast of coffee, fruit cup and some reindeer sausage we went to the main lodge for our Denali Air pick up.
We made it to the airstrip for our weigh-in. We stepped on a scale with all our camera gear. My last Miami weight was somewhere around 225. While she didn't announce it, I think I saw her write down 270. It must have been that morning reindeer sausage because I don't think my camera gear and heavy clothing weighs 45 lbs. It may also be the altitude, or the polar magnetic pull or the humidity because it certainly couldn't be the fact that I recently stepped off an all-you-can-eat cruise ship. Everything is bigger in Alaska.
We met Connie our pilot. With a name like Connie I knew he had to be tough. We boarded an eight seat twin engine plane with large windows. The cabin was spacious by American Airlines standards. This means that Sue, Sue, 4 Japanese photographers and myself were packed in like sardines. The extra Sue in that sentence was not a typo as we have been traveling all along with several of Sue's high school friends. We started the cruise as a party of nine, three of whom were Sues. By this time our party had dwindled down to five.
We lifted off from the airstrip just outside Denali National Park. As we approached cruising altitude we hit a few air pockets. This was wonderful as it allowed me to re-enjoy my reindeer sausage just a bit. The flight smoothed out and the scenery was spectacular. Mt. McKinley looked deceptively like you could reach out and touch it. Touching the mountain in such a fashion was not on my agenda and we all hoped it wasn't on Connie's mind either. He later told us that, with the mountain miles away but appearing very close, he would occasionally turn and begin a conversation with the guests as he flew directly at the mountain. He enjoyed watching their animated faces as he continued his mountain approach. We were glad he just related this story instead of an actual performance.
We flew around the peak and through several smaller peaks and over glaciers that appeared as white rivers of ice with black borders. After a complete circumnavigation of Mt. McKinley we flew above the park splashed with greens from the pines, yellows from the aspen and birch trees and reds of the bear berries. Fall in Denali is beautiful. Since I am writing this you already know we landed safely. We all took group pictures in front of the plane with Connie. The Japanese photographers took several with our cameras and we reciprocated.
This little excursion helped fill the time between our 10 a.m. "get-out-of-your-room-so-we-can-clean-it" and our 3 p.m. bus to the train station. The train ride from Denali to Fairbanks was uneventful and somewhat boring as we had already had enjoyed the best scenery between Anchorage and Denali.
We arrived in Fairbanks and stayed at the Westmark, a Holland America hotel. This hotel was the finest of our trip so far. We rented a car and moved our belongings to the Pikes Waterfront Lodge. We went back and picked up three of our friends who had later flights that day. All of us went to the University of Alaska Museum of the North. The museum had a large collection of Alaskan art, native artifacts, stuffed animals (the dead scary kind) and dinosaur bones. We dropped off one of the Sue's at the airport. Luckily it turned out that we dropped off the right one. If I had messed that one up I would never have heard the end of it.
We had lunch at Gambardella's Italian Restaurant and returned the remaining couple, Terry and Kathy to await their ride to the airport. We returned to Pikes and made plans for a possible aurora sighting that evening. We put in a wake-up call in case the aurora showed up. We set up our cameras and had our gear all ready for a quick run outside to catch the elusive Northern Lights. We didn't need our wake-up as the cloud cover blocked any chance of a sighting. We also found out that a previous guest decided against his wake-up call and had unplugged the phone.
We had noticed a large number of young Japanese tourists and were eventually told that they were also here for the Northern Lights but for a reason that differed from Sue's and mine. They believe it is good luck to have conceived under the Northern Lights. Sue and I considered this possibility for less than a nanosecond and decided it wouldn't be a good idea. It also gave us pause to consider even going into the hot springs at the Cheena Lodge.
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