Anchorage and Mt. McKinley Smiles

Dear Blog Friends,

As most of you know John and I took classes and became  travel agents after we retired from teaching school. It is more work than it appears but it is a nice way for us to travel at a reduced rate and see beautiful parts of this wonderful world God made for us.  We just got back from taking a group to Alaska for a land tour and a sea cruise.

We flew with our group on Alaska airlines from LA to Anchorage by way of Portland.

It was a long day of travel so we were excited when we saw Alaska below us…

…And got our first glimpse of Anchorage.

We were picked up at the airport by our Princess transfer van and driven

….to the Cook Hotel where we spent the night. The picture on the left was taken around midnight and the picture of our hotel on the right was taken mid day. There is about 20 hours of daylight there this time of year.

Most of our group ate breakfast in the hotel the next morning but locals recommended that we try reindeer hot dogs from one of the vender carts for lunch. We did and they were delicious….. just don’t tell my grandkids we ate a reindeer…. I’m sure that it wasn’t one of Santa’s.

I wish that we could have had more time in Anchorage so I could have seen more of that city and gotten more picture to show you. We only had a short time there before we boarded our Princess bus and headed inland to Mt. McKinley. Our bus driver was a cute Mormon boy from BYU who drives bus in Alaska for a summer job. It was fun getting to know him.

After about a 4 hour drive we arrived at Mt. McKinley Princess Lodge.  There had been a blizzard the week before but the weather was beautiful the whole time we were on our land tour.

Our room and the lodge were comfortable and beautiful.

The food was very good at each of the restaurants but of course the best part of our stay was…

…The breath taking view of Mt. McKinley.

Mt. McKinley is the highest peak in North America. It is 30,230 ft. high.

It was named Denali by the Indians which means “The great one.” The Alaskans still call the mountain Denali. (I bet you can guess who that is in the hat viewing the mountain.)

 

It is a shy mountain and likes to hide in the clouds most of the time. They say that she is only visible about 30% of the time. She was in clear view for us both days we were at Mt. McKinley….. we were really lucky blessed.

It was with some regret that we packed up our bags and boarded the bus that would take us to Talkeetna…. but we were also excited to continue our Alaskan adventure.

I’ll look forward to showing you more of Alaska in my next post.

I’m glad to be back where I can visit your blogs again. I look forward to getting caught up with what you have been doing the last 2 weeks.

Hugs, Lura