Somehow, whenever we've flown out to Alaska, something has gone wrong. Last time, Patrick lost his luggage for seven days and received his suitcase the day before we left. This time:- Somehow Patrick was put on the standby list for our first flight out of Raleigh. Luckily, someone didn't show up and he got on the plane.
- We missed our connection in Houston by 5 minutes.
- We made it to Seattle just in time to get 3 hours of sleep at Patrick's house, but without luggage.
- We fly into Anchorage, and whose luggage doesn't show up??? Mine, of course.
- We get into a fight with the baggage lady who was wearing a ridiculous shade of lip gloss and start yelling at us when we asked her any question.
With a quick pit stop at REI in Anchorage to buy some replacement clothes and shoes (scored another pair of running shoes!! on sale too!), we were off to Denali National Park.
The park is HUGE - about 6 million acres (larger than Massachusetts) - and home to tons of caribou, grizzly bears (seen to the left), and moose, among others. No cars are allowed in the park, so you ride a an old school bus into the park and you can stop anywhere and go hiking - there are hardly any trails but you are allowed to walk anywhere you want.
The main attraction of the park is Mount McKinley, or Denali, meaning "the high one." The largest mountain on the North American continent, it rises to 20,320 feet. We lucked out in that both of our days were perfectly clear and we got BEAUTIFUL views of the mountain.
(The guide said that he only gets clear days like this 6 times out of the entire summer).
For lunch, we hiked up a ridge and ate lunch looking at Denali, and Carl the caribou
decided to join us!
The next day we headed down to Seward, Alaska, but stopped along the way for a hike around Byer's Lake, where you could eat fresh blueberries right off the trail and still see Denali in the background!
Stay tuned for the second
installment!
Love, B
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