The view from our room. The river is the Nenana where we went rafting
A bus from the rafting company picked us up at our hotel and took us to their base on the Nenana river. There we were all fitted with "dry suits". These are tight fitting rubber suits which are water tight and keep one from getting wet if you should fall into the river's icy, glacial fed, thirty-five degree water. We also had to don life vests. They then herded us onto a school bus and drove us to the put-in point some thirteen miles upriver from their base. There they divided us into groups of eight or nine to a raft. Each raft was piloted by an experienced river guide who steered us with a pair of oars from a middle seat - in our case this person was a young woman who despite her youth was quite experienced and had even done raft guiding in New Zealand. Our job was simply to hold on and enjoy the trip.
I should point out that the raft trip we took was one of two possible routes. Ours was considered more of a scenic wilderness trip and less of a thrill ride in that we only experienced a few class II and one or two class III rapids (rapids go from class I to class VI with VI being the most dangerous). The other route had more of the class III rapids. However, our guide told us that ours was by far the more scenic route. I think she was probably right. Other than the other rafts, we saw no other humans or signs of humanity during nearly the entire 13 mile trip on the Nenana. It was only as we came to the end that we saw some houses along the banks. The scenery and the atmosphere was really amazing, the rapids we did shoot were a lot of fun (those suits proved their usefulness) and while it rained a little bit during the trip (who cared? Rubber suits!) it was enough to create a beautiful double rainbow which we haven't seen since we were in Hawai'i. The only bad thing is that we were not permitted to bring any cameras unless they were waterproof - so unfortunately no pictures of this trip.
Here is a picture from the Web of the area we rafted on the Nenana
By the way, the raft trip (including preparation) started at six o'clock in the evening and ended around nine forty-five - and it was still broad daylight. The sun only sets for a couple of hours a night in that part of Alaska in the summer! After the raft company took us back to our hotel, we ate a late dinner and off to bed.
The next day, we were picked up by a U.S. Parks Service bus for our Denali Park tour. The Parks service decided some years ago to ban all private vehicles from most of Denali Park in order to preserve the integrity of the eco-system. The only way to see the park by road is on the Park Service bus tours. The drivers are all park rangers and qualified naturalists, so this is probably as good a tour as you would get in any case.
The bus took us to the visitors' center at the park entrance where we watched a short film on the history of the park - and more importantly scored some coffee and bagels for breakfast at the snack bar. Then we headed off down the park road. The park was very beautiful with mountains, tundra, and taiga (taiga is a sub-arctic forest made up mostly of evergreens with some broadleaf trees). Unfortunately, we did not see much in the way of wildlife - just a couple of caribou too far away to photograph, some snowshoe hares, and some wild sheep which were pretty much just moving white dots high up on a mountain. The bus driver/naturalist said this was pretty much par for the course - seeing wildlife was a luck of the draw sort of thing.
The Savage River in Denali Park
Eventually, the bus tour wound up at the Alaska Railroad terminal in Denali Park, where we boarded a rail coach for the next leg of our trip. I found it interesting that the cruise companies have their own private rail cars for their land based tours. They are coupled on to regularly scheduled Alaska Railroad passenger trains traveling on the line between Fairbanks and Anchorage. The RCL coach was quite nice. It was two levels with the top having a full length vista dome and the lower level being a dining car and kitchen facility. On the day we left Denali bound southward to the town of Talkeetna we ate lunch on board and it was quite good. While we spent most of our time up top in the dome where the view was unobstructed, the dining deck had large picture windows so that even while eating we did not miss much of the spectacular scenery. The train also had an on-board tour guide who told us what we were looking at and answered questions.
Eventually, our train pulled into the town of Talkeetna AK where we were to spend the night. More on that next time.
Next: Talkeetna, a classic Alaskan gin-mill, and the elusive Mt. McKinley.
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