Alaska {Part 3}

My last Alaska post left off after our day in Denali, so I'm picking up where I left off. (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

Day 4 - Friday, June 20 - Anchorage/Seward, AK

We left Denali Friday morning to ultimately head to Seward which was where we would catch the cruise ship. We made a pit-stop in Anchorage for a few hours on the way though. One thing that I loved about doing both the land and cruise was that I got to see so much of Alaska. I think I got a really good feel for the entire state since we started in the middle of the state and worked our way down the coast.

The ride from Denali to Anchorage was beautiful. It wasn't raining and the skies were clearer than any of the previous days, so we could actually see the mountains!

There were rugged snow covered mountains everywhere you looked.

I think this shot of the mountains through the clouds with the sun starting to come out is pretty neat.

Can you imagine driving down the highway next to this everyday?!

We only had about 2 hours in Anchorage, which again was a bummer because I really loved the city. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, and it was nice to be back in civilization after a few days of being out in the middle of nowhere. We ate lunch at a little seafood place called Humpy's, and I had really good fried fish there. Fresh seafood is always my favorite!

We spent the rest of our short time in Anchorage just walking around. It was a gorgeous day!

I loved how you were in the middle of a city, but you could still see the mountains surrounding it.

I also found a bakery that I had to stop at called Alaska Cake Studio.

I ordered the Chocolate Red Wine cupcake, and it was good! At first, I thought the sign said Chocolate Red Velvet, but then it turned out to be Red Wine. I was intrigued, so I had to try it. I definitely didn't taste any red wine in it, but it was still delicious.

We then started making our way to Seward. I had thought the drive from Denali to Anchorage was pretty, but the drive from Anchorage to Seward was even more gorgeous!

This is one of my favorite pictures from Alaska, and I just took it with my iPhone out the window of a moving bus. Ha!

I love this shot out the front window of the bus because you can see the mountains in the distance.

I shot a video as we were driving too. There's a little glare from my phone in parts of it, but I think it gives you a good feel for the scenery even when you were just driving down the highway.

Once we arrived in Seward, it was time to say goodbye to our tour guides from the land portion and board the cruise ship. We went on the Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas, and I really liked the ship!

When we got to our stateroom, we found some chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us from my aunt. Such a nice surprise!

My family decided that since Alaska would probably be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, we would splurge on a balcony cabin. It was definitely neat to be able to sit on the balcony and watch the mountains go by. The balcony was one of the first things we checked out after getting on board, and the mountains were pretty even when we were just docked in Seward.

We then went to explore some other parts of the ship. This was the Centrum, which was kind of like the main lobby. They had a bunch of events going on around here throughout the week.

We went up on deck too. It was a little weird being on the top deck of a cruise ship and wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, but that's Alaska for you ;)

I knew going into this trip that I wanted to take a Kappa Delta picture to use as my Facebook cover photo. I thought that I would take it in a few different places with some different scenery in the background and at the end of the trip, I would pick which one was my favorite to use. Well, I ended up only taking two pictures because the second one turned out SO good that I knew I couldn't get it any better ;) This was the first one I took, which still turned out cute. I'll be posting the better one in my next Alaska post!

After a little bit of exploring, it was time for dinner. Dinner on a cruise ship is simply the best. Everything is already paid for so you can order anything you want. Plus you get a starter, entree, and dessert every evening. I would give just about anything to have another cruise ship dinner! On our first night, I had fruit, prime rib, and carrot cake. I took a picture of my dessert every night, so be prepared for lots of yummy dessert pictures coming up.....

We spent the rest of the evening enjoying drinks on our balcony and going to the show. If I remember correctly, we went to bed kind of early that night because we had been so busy that day :)

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll stop there and pick up with our first full day of cruising later!

Alaska {Part 2}

I'm back today with another Alaska post. If you missed the first one, you can read it here.

Day 3 - Thursday, June 19 - Denali, AK

We woke up early Thursday morning to leave Fairbanks and head to Denali. We took a glass top train called the Wilderness Express, and it was so neat! It was about a 4 hour train ride, but you could look out in any direction and just see the wilderness stretch on for miles. I had never been on a train before, so I really enjoyed it!

The scenery was really pretty!

They also had a dining car down below, so we ate breakfast on the train.

I ordered the blueberry pancakes (which were SO good) with a side of reindeer sausage. Yeah, I ate reindeer. And it was actually pretty good. Sorry Rudolph ;)

Then we got to Denali and went straight into the park. We decided to upgrade our tour to the Tundra Wilderness Tour, which was a 7-8 hour tour through the park. One of the unique things about Denali National Park is that there is only one road that dead ends 90 miles into the park. Commercial vehicles can only drive the first 15 miles or so before they get turned around. If you want to drive deeper into the park, you have to take one of their buses. I thought that was kind of different, but it also made the park seem much more like you were just out in the middle of the mountains. The roads weren't paved and there wasn't any electricity, so it was much more secluded and rustic than pretty much every other national park I've ever gone to.

Unfortunately, it rained the entire day we were there. As in the entire 8 hour bus tour. We were a little bummed that we couldn't see Mount McKinley, but apparently only about 30% of people who visit actually get to see it. It's so crazy to me that a piece of land can spend most of its time above the clouds!

Even though it rained all day, we did still get to see a lot.

We saw a lot of animals too. This is a grizzly bear....

....caribou....

....and moose!

Can you see the moose in the middle of the grass out there? I loved getting to see all of the wildlife, especially since I had never seen a moose before in real life. They say that on the tour that we did you can usually see "the big four" (dall sheep, caribou, grizzly bear, and moose), and we got to see all of them!

We got back to our hotel super late that night and just had a little bit of time to eat dinner and explore. I wish we would have had more time in Denali!

We stayed at the McKinley Village Lodge, and it was so cute!

Standing around this bonfire was perfect after a long, cold, and wet day.

That was our day in Denali! I'll be back with more Alaska posts soon.

Alaska {Part 1}

I have finally loaded all of my Alaska pictures onto my computer, and oh my gosh - there are a ton of good ones! I have so many pictures and we were gone for so long, that there are going to be a lot of Alaska posts over the next few weeks!

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 17 - Fairbanks, AK

Our first day was just a lot of traveling! We had to travel about 3750 miles to Fairbanks.

Here my mom and I are getting ready to take off!

All of Alaska is on the same time zone, which is 4 hours behind EST. We ended up landing in Fairbanks around 10:30 PM their time, which was really late for us. We were so excited though that we didn't want to just go to bed, so we walked around our hotel, Pike's Waterfront Lodge, for a little bit.

This picture was probably taken around 11:30 PM, and look how light it is! That was one of the weird things about Alaska - it was almost 24 hours of daylight. It was kind of neat to see that, but it was so crazy to go to bed late when it was light out, and then wake up early and it was still light out.

Day 2 - Wednesday, June 18 - Fairbanks, AK
The next morning we had breakfast in our hotel before heading out on a tour of the Gold Dredge 8. We thought the tour was going to be kind of lame, but we ended up having fun! We booked our whole land portion through Royal Caribbean, so most of the day was kind of planned out for us already.

We got to see the Alaskan Pipeline as well. Not super pretty or anything but one of those things unique to Alaska.

It rained pretty much constantly while we were on the land portion, but that didn't stop us from doing a lot!

This is the actual gold dredge that they used back in the day to separate the gold out of the dirt.

Then we got to pan for gold ourselves, which was actually really neat.

 

I even found and got to keep my gold flecks!


We then got dropped in downtown Fairbanks, which really wasn't a whole lot. We had enough time to grab lunch and walk around a little bit, but the town is so small that there wasn't really much to look at. I thought this was funny though - it gets super cold in Fairbanks during the winter that the people who live there have to plug their cars in so they don't get too cold that they won't start. They also have these pipes around the city that shoot off steam to defrost your windshields in the winter while you're driving. Can you imagine living somewhere that cold?!

Fairbanks is one of the top places to see the Northern Lights too. The prime viewing for that is in the winter though when it's pretty much constantly dark. That is one thing I would LOVE to see someday, but I'm not too sure whether I would want to brave the cold Alaskan winter.

We had the rest of the afternoon to choose what we wanted to do. They had a couple of optional excursions we could have done, but none of them seemed all that interesting, so we just headed back to the hotel. We took naps and then did a little more exploring around our hotel.

Our hotel had been the starting point for the Iditarod in 2003, so they had a little garden commemorating that. I quickly learned that Alaskans love the Iditarod and all things dog sledding. Just another thing kind of unique to Alaska!

Our hotel had a restaurant right next door, so we ate dinner there. I tried chicken & waffles, and I am now obsessed! It does seem kind of funny that I went about as far north in the US as you can go and ordered chicken & waffles when that's more of a Southern thing ;) It was so good though!

We went to bed early that night because we had to be up to head out to Denali the next day, which I'll save for another post.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend!