Planes, Trains, Busses and Boats

After a six hour and twenty minute plane ride we found our Princess representative at the baggage claim area. Our first buss ride was to the hotel for a one night stay in Anchorage. Arriving after 9 pm we were hungry and tired. The buss driver recommended several places to eat. His favorite was Humpy’s, so after getting our bags into our rooms we headed to Humpy’s. The live band was loud but the fresh vegetable soup along with a glass of Alaskan Ale was to die for. The soup had all kinds of veggies with just a little kick to it. It did hit the spot. The next morning bright and early or rather cloud/rainy and early, we got on another buss to catch the Princess train to Denali. I must say that Princess had both the land and sea tours well organized. We were given tags for our luggage at each stop. Leaving them out the night before we left, we would find them in our rooms along with additional information when we got to our hotels/ship. We had been advised that there may be up to a three hour delay in getting the bags that traveled with us but this was not the case. Our luggage beat us to our rooms in all three stops and we got to the rooms with no delays.

The train ride to Denali was in the upper level of the Princess train car with there glass domes providing unobstructed viewing for the most part. A table sat four of us comfortable. Breakfast and lunch were served in the lower portion of the car. I squeezed, and I mean squeezed into the booth for breakfast, passed on lunch. There were open air observation decks that we visited.


When we got to Denali we had booked a white water rafting tour. This was a first for all of us and a tour I would recommend. I may have mentioned that it had been raining for most of the summer in most of Alaska. The rain run off along with glacier runoff made for great rafting on the Nenana Gorge which runs through Denali for eleven miles or so. The guides were excited for us.“ We will ride level three, four and five white water this evening, hang on tight”! There were detailed safety instructions given along with demonstration on how to put on your wet suit. A young mountain man type, who was one of the raft guides, came up to me and said that three of his buddies (other guides) had a bet that they could get me into one of the wet suits but that I would be very uncomfortable. He suggested that I wear a pair of foam rubber overalls along with an additional rain coat and that I would only get wet from the lower half. I should have taken the bet! There was no way they could have gotten me into that wet suit.
These picture is one of the smaller rapids. We were faced with waves five to six feet over our heads a couple of times with two to four waves the norm.
This is serious bussiness! Wendy was very concerned that we were all going to die. "Kurt! Hold on!! Kurt are you holding on!!! To say she was frighten would not discribe it. Her hands held so tight to the bar behide us that it took several minutes to strighten her finders out after we were on land. We all got our heads wet and I did end up with a wet bottom. The water temp was 35....cooold!!!