Travel Diaries: Alaskan Adventure, 2014

I mentioned a recent post that I went away for a bit (ten days, to be specific), and now that my suitcases are unpacked, my (slight) jet-lag recovered from, and my pictures imported and sorted through, I'm finally ready to write about my trip. My parents took me and one of my two brothers, Mike, to Alaska for a three day land tour and then a week long cruise on Holland America Line's M/S Oosterdam. This post is going to go up in two parts: one focusing on our adventure on and, and the other all about our vacation on board.

We started out on Thursday with a fairly early (think around 7am) two-hour flight to Minneapolis, where our forty-five minute layover turned into getting off of one plane and directly onto another. Once we were seated on our second flight, it was just over six hours to Anchorage, Alaska, where we started our trip. Anchorage is the largest city in the state, but the airport was one of smallest I've ever been in. Because of the time change (four hours behind EST), we all went to bed fairly early, but before we retired for the night we explored around the city.

Friday morning we left Anchorage around 8am and took an eight hour train ride up north to Denali National Park, where we would spend the rest of the weekend. We stayed in the McKinley Chalet Resort, which reminded me of a series of joint log cabins. The scenery was just beautiful: mountains, miles of trees, wildlife, and fresh, clean air. The night we arrived, we went to the resort's Cabin Nite dinner theater before crashing in our rooms. On Saturday, the resort took us on an eight hour wilderness tundra tour through Denali National Park, where we saw an array of animals (bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep, and eagles) and then had a crystal-clear view of Mt. McKinley. After the tour, we ate dinner at a restaurant on resort property, and then my parents took me to Jeff King's Husky Homestead, which is where Iditarod champion Jeff King breeds, raises, trains, and cares for his Husky sled dogs. Not only did we get to watch a team of dogs pull an ATV and learn about the actual facility, but we got to hold and play with some of the puppies. I held one that was two weeks old in addition to an older guy named Red.

On Sunday, we all piled onto a coach bus and drove ten hours from Denali to Seward where the boat was docked. On the way, we stopped at Alaska's Veteran Memorial. My grandfather is a veteran Marine from the Korean War, so I really have grown to appreciate these types of war monuments. But finally, we arrived in Seward and to the Oosterdam. 

Think the land part was nice? Wait until you see the ship and the (there is no other word to describe this) epic adventure we took in Juneau during our day there. 

Have you ever been to Alaska?

Alyssa