Blog archives for June, 2002

Still feeling like we were on Eastern Daylight Time (4 hours behind Alaska time), we woke early and packed up. We then walked over to the Muffin Man for some bagels, coffee and a few goodies for the trip. Returning to the hotel, we still had plenty of time to pick up the bus to the train station. We took McKinley Explorer train from Anchorage to Denali National Park. NOTE: Denali is the local name for the mountain and a few years ago the National Park was renamed to be Denali National Park. Locals call the mountain Denali as well even though the official government name is still Mt. McKinley.

The McKinley Explorer consisted of several 2 story passenger cars being pulled by an Alaska Railroad train (along with several other cruise line passenger cars). The bottom level was the dining room and kitchen and passengers sat on the second level with large windows giving a fantastic view of the countryside

Each car had a Car Manager who narrated the trip and a bartender who kept the passengers well lubricated along with serving coffee, tea, and soft drinks. Our Car Manager was named Ben and he was very good. He was in fact manager over all the other car managers and was quite knowledgeable about the wildlife and scenery. Keith the bartender, liked to tell bad jokes whenever he could get the microphone from Ben. The food was good in the dining room (if pricey) and the view was stunning. The weather was very good and we managed to catch a view of Mt. McKinley from the train several times. We were told that only about 1/3 of the people that come to the park ever see the mountain due to the weather that often covers the summit.

The trip took about 8 hours so we arrived in Denali about 4 in the afternoon. We took a bus to the Denali Chalets hotel for the night. We were hungry so we grabbed an early dinner: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, saut�ed squash. The dinner was good but a bad idea (see below).

On the train we had signed up for an optional excursion: fixed wing flightseeing of Mt. McKinley. We picked up the bus to Denali Air, the vendor for out tour. Our pilot was Phil, who did a very good job of flying and detailing our journey.

Once we cleared the cloud layer, we got our first view of Mt. McKinley. Judge for yourself but it was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen.

On the return trip, the combination of looking at the ground from a small moving plane and the pilot doing some “creative flying” in an attempt to let us see some wildlife, both Denise and I got air sick. Even though we were a tad green when we landed, we both managed to keep our dinners down.

Denise’s dad, Doyal Abbott, agreed to take us to the airport so we would not have to leave our car there for over a week. He picked us up about 5:30 and we arrived at Raleigh Durham Airport (RDU) around 5:45 for our 8:10 flight. We unloaded our bags from the back of the van and said goodbye. Just after Doyal left, we noticed that we were missing our hang-up bag! Since he did not have a cell phone and was going back to our house to drop off the van and do some yard work, we had to call Doyal’s wife, Dolores, and ask her travel to our house and have him return to RDU with our bag. He arrived about 6:15 and this time we made sure that all our luggage was our possession before we let him go a second time.

This goof turned out to be an omen of how our flight to Alaska was going to be. When we checked in with the porter, we were then notified that we had met some criteria to have our luggage hand-searched. That required standing in a special line and waiting for about 20 minutes while the security guards unpacked and re-packed all our checked bags. We then went to the security lines for carry-on bags. Denise had packed a bag of quarters which forced the security folks to hand search and identify the x-ray proof item. We finally made it to our departure gate at about 7:15. When I checked in, they told me that were had been randomly selected to be searched! This time we had to stand with our arms outstretched while they used a medal detector wand to examine use. We also had to have our ankles hand checked, then remove our shoes and have the soles of our feet checked with the wand and then finally have our carry-on baggage unpacked and re-packed. Now every item we had brought had been handled by the security staff.

At last we got on our plane and headed for our first destination (Minneapolis-St. Paul). Flight time was about 2 hours and we had a 1 hour layover there. We split a slim-fast bar and a bottle of water since we were going to be served lunch on the next leg of our flight. Denise was once again randomly selected to be searched as we were boarding the second flight. On board, lunch was an oriental chicken, rice, green beans – which was quite good. This next segment was about 5 hours and the last hour or so we were flying over mountains and glaciers of coastal Alaska. We arrived in Anchorage and met the HAL folks at the baggage claim area. Once we collected our luggage and handed them over to the HAL folks, we got on our bus to the hotel.

The bus driver had folks for 3 different hotels and could not drop us by the Marriott due to other busses at the curb. He ended driving around Anchorage and giving us a mini-tour. In the process, he told us of several restaurants and places to see while in-route. After getting to the hotel and finding our room, we left to find dinner. We ended up eating at the Glacier Brewhouse and walking around Anchorage to do a little sightseeing.

On our way back to the hotel, we found a breakfast place that opened in time for us to get breakfast before we would leave in the morning. We returned to the hotel and repacked so we could send most of our bags on to the ship (no need lugging them around the next few days if we could avoid it).

Two weeks ago, Denise and I went on a cruise tour to Alaska to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Since I was not able to access my blog while on the trip, I thought it would be nice to use my Palm to store memories of the trip and then I post entries to my blog when I returned. Over the next 10 days or so, I’ll post entries in my blog as if I were on the trip. The dates in the entry titles reflect when the events occurred, not when I post the entries. I hope you enjoy our trip.

Background

First, let me give you some background. Over the last few years, Denise and I have talked about doing something special for our 20th anniversary. Our 25th would be while Alana is in college and we thought money might be too tight for us to something big then so we picked our 20th instead. We had both wanted to take a cruise and felt that Alaska was more our speed than some party boat to the Caribbean.

Denise started researching the different cruise lines and had narrowed it down to Holland American Line (HAL), Celebrity, and Princess. After examining the boats, land tours, shore excursions, dates, and other factors, we decided to go with HAL and the ms Statendam. We also wanted to take the McKinley Explorer glass top train through the Denali National Park and visit Mt. McKinley. Given June as the best time (Alana was out of school, Denise and my work schedules, etc.) we ended up booking the trip for June 13 through June 23 for our trip.

The basic cruise tour would involve flying to Anchorage from Raleigh, spend the night in Anchorage, take the train to Denali, tour Denali National Park, take the train on to Fairbanks, sightsee in Fairbanks, fly back to Anchorage, bus tour through the Kenai Peninsula to Seward, board the ms Statendam in Seward, sail to College Fjords, Glacier Bay, stop in Sitka, Juneau, and Ketchikan, and them sail through the inside passage to Vancouver where we would fly back to Raleigh.

We also wanted a nice room since we figured that we would spend some time in the room looking out at the scenery as we sailed. Also Denise liked some of the perks that suite passengers received so we ended up booking an outside deluxe suite on the land side (port side for south traveling ships). We booked our trip shortly after 9/11 so we got a good deal on the air fare. We also got a good deal on the cruise by booking early and paying up-front.

On Saturday (6/1), our band played at a party to celebrate the ordination of a new priest at one of the local Catholic churches. The party organizer was interest in Irish music so he went to the web and did a search for Irish music in the Raleigh area and our band web page was the first search hit! He contacted me to discuss the gig and ended up dropping by one of our gigs at Tir na nOg to give us a listen. During the break we talked some more and he offered us the job.

Since it was our job to be “background music” for this party, we decided to keep the PA volume at a medium level so folks could talk, play mostly our slower and less energetic tunes and songs, and worked hard to keep the craic from getting out of hand. We started off with some waltzes and a few slow airs while the people mingled and talked before dinner. We moved in some slip jigs, slow hornpipes and a few songs while people got their food and ate. After dinner, we added a few more jigs and reels but kept the tempo moderate and energy level under control. As things were breaking up and people were leaving, we indulged ourselves and played a few high energy dance tunes before packing up the sound gear and loading it into the van.

We got a lot of positive feedback from both party goers and the host. While the band was standing outside by the van chatting, one of the priests walked by and recognized us. He said, “You guys were great. I thought you were a CD. When the music stopped, I thought to my self that somebody should have put the CD on repeat. Then I looked over and noticed that it was a live band.” I’m not sure you can get a much better complement than that!