Denali

Alaska 2016/Planning

Planning for Denali boiled down to a few key questions:

Did we want to stay at one of the "back country" lodges (with the Denali Backcountry Lodge being our leading candidate)?
If not the back country, did we want to stay in Glitter Gulch or elsewhere?
For the park itself, shuttle buses or tour buses?

Question #1 resolved to a "no" due to scheduling. Our schedule allowed for a two night stay at Denali, and the economics of the all-inclusive fees at the DBL across only two nights weren't worth it to me. If we'd had a couple of full days to relax at the DBL I would have done it, but two nights just felt too rushed to me.

Question #2 was tougher to answer. Ideally, I wanted to stay at Denali Dome Home because it simply looked much more comfortable than any of the Glitter Gulch hotels. The problem with DDH (and other similar places) is that you really have to have a car in order to be away from Glitter Gulch and the attendant shuttles. Of course, if you have a car you are also freed up to try different places for dinner than the normal group of local restaurants.

Well, guess what? The owners of DDH also run "Keys to Denali", which claims to be the ONLY car rental business in Denali/Healy. Lots of web searching seemed to confirm this to be true. So staying at DDH seemed like a good possibility, given that the owners would meet you at the train station upon arrival with your car. (In fact, once on the ground we saw at least two other places advertising car rental...but I never found reference to either of those places in web-based research. I don't recall the names of either places - one of them was next to Miner's Market, and the other was at another B&B.)

So, when the trip was just our family of 4 DDH was the leading candidate. When we expanded to a group of 11 the logistics of car rental became a bit more complicated, as we'd need two cars - or so I thought. I briefly considered renting car(s) in Fairbanks for our trip to Denali, but I didn't want to continue driving all the way to Anchorage if we could avoid it, so a one-way Fairbanks-to-Anchorage rental wasn't an option. One-way rentals are also pretty expensive, with surcharges from $150-500, depending on the agency. However, it turned out that DDH could rent us a 12-passenger van for the 2 days were were there. (As our plans firmed up we realized that while we were a group of 11 for the cruise, only 8 of us would be doing the land tour ahead of meeting up in Anchorage. So an 11 pax van for 8 of us left room for our luggage.) TIMING ADVICE: We booked DDH just a few days before Christmas 2015 - and by then there were only 3 rooms left available. So we ended up filling up their rooms. If we'd waited any longer we likely would have missed out.

If we couldn't do DDH I would have tried to fall back to Denali Bluffs Hotel. I preferred this to Denali Grande Hotel (same ownership group) as it was cheaper while still looking quite comfortable. In addition, it appeared to be an easier walk from DBH to a lot of the restaurants, and in this configuration we would have been without a car so that was a consideration. TIMING ADVICE: In early January 2016 I saw at least one thread on CruiseCritic from someone reporting shock that she was unable to find any availability at the major hotels for June 2016. Respondents suggested several alternate choices. The spots recommended didn't ring a bell with me after my searches - I think many of them were small hotels listed on the local Chamber of Commerce site and not places widely discussed. So, bottom line, for Glitter Gulch it sounds like you might need to be planning at LEAST six months out to have good selection.

Question #3 was finally answered in favor of shuttle buses. The reasons were as follows:

Costs for the hop-on/hop-off shuttle buses were significantly less than the tour buses.
As far as I could tell the seats on all the buses were the same, so the level of "comfort" was the same. Comfort is a relative term, as the seats are not plush captain's chair type bus seats, but rather sparsely padded leather seats.
The shuttle bus drivers also drive the tour buses, so all drivers have the same info at their fingertips. Several folks who have taken the shuttles say that most (but certainly not all) shuttle drivers still provide commentary during the trip - and all drivers on all routes are equally adept at spotting and stopping for wildlife.
The snacks provided on the tour buses didn't appear to rise above bottle of water/sandwich wrap/granola bar. I figured we could deal with supplying our own food. DDH was able to recommend a few places we could go to build sandwich boxes, and many of the restaurant and cafe web sites indicated that they'd provide the same. And lots of CruiseCritic members mention that they bought stuff at the Subway sandwich shop somewhere near the Princess Lodge.

The trade-off with shuttles is that you don't have a guarantee that you'll get a return trip seat exactly when you want - you're in competition with others also heading back. You CAN return on the bus you arrived on without any challenges - you get first priority there. This risk only comes into play if you decide to stay at the turn-around point longer than your bus stays. For a large group like ours it seemed possible that - if we were to decide to stay at the Eileson Visitor Center longer than our bus would wait - we might have to split up on the return trip in order to find enough seats to accommodate us.

TIMING ADVICE: I pre-booked 8 shuttle slots about 2 weeks after the early December 2015 opening of reservations. I had no difficulty picking the mid-morning departure time I wanted. Our hosts at DDH strongly suggested that we did NOT use a pre-9A boarding time. This was partially so we could enjoy a leisurely breakfast with them, but they also mentioned that, from a practical standpoint, animal viewing was simply not affected by boarding time. This same advice was to be found from many of the more Alaska-savvy on the CC boards.

Day 2: June 20, 2016 (afternoon)

Once we arrived at the Denali Depot and got off the train we had to wait for our luggage to be offloaded. Had we been staying at one of the Glitter Gulch lodgings the railroad would be pre-tagged our bags with the hotel name and the hotel would have retrieved our luggage and transported it to our rooms for us. DDH isn't one of the places that has their own tags, however, so we had to wait for our bags to be put out in the "general" pile and collect them ourselves. While waiting Ann came out to the baggage claim area and shouted out C's last name to locate us. Ann (she and husband Terry own and operate Denali Dome Home) had driven our van over to the depot to greet us, so once we all had luggage we followed her to the van and stuffed everyone in. Within about 20 minutes were we at DDH.

DDH was really lovely. Ann and Terry were both very warm and inviting, and the rooms were all comfortable. Terry makes great use of his two cast-iron skillets in the mornings to build custom-order breakfasts. We variously sampled french toast, pancakes, eggs, moose sausages (Terry's little joke name for pork sausages), fruits, and cereals in the morning...and enjoyed fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies in the evenings. The other guests were equally enjoyable.

One of two lounging areas in Denali Dome Home.

Having arrived at DDH around 1PM or so we quickly got settled into our room and then piled back into the van - this time with M driving - to find some lunch. We ended up at 49th State Brewing Company, which was nearby. Their sister restaurant is the Denali Salmon Bake at Glitter Gulch, but Ann and Terry had warned us that the Salmon Bake wasn't getting good reviews. The Brewing Company had a fun vibe to it - I grabbed a couple of photos of some of the decor. A few folks tried one of the house-brewed beers...and our son R had the house root beer. Most of us had fish-based meals, with one mac and cheese thrown in, too. We were hungry and the food didn't disappoint!

Part of the decor at 49th State Brewing Company. This was in the upper corner nearest our table.

From lunch we drove over to Park Headquarters because we wanted to catch the 4PM presentation at the Dog Kennel. Terry had advised us to park at the back end of the parking lot and pick up the trailhead for the (short) walk to the kennels. Here, the rangers discussed why they make such extensive use of dogs in the park, and they had the dogs pull a sled around a short demo course. They had a relatively inexperienced lead dog at the front and she showed it by veering off-course at one point as she got distracted by the crowd. That was a great demonstration of how they have to train dogs for different roles. The whole thing took about 25 minutes including Q&A and was quite interesting. After the presentation we were encouraged to walk around the kennel area an interact with the dogs.

The ranger host at the Denali Dog Kennel presentation. The dogs have just completed their sled pull and are starting to play with chew toys that are being handed out.

A few of the sled dogs at the Denali NPS dog kennel.

From there we drove over to the Visitor Center and spent about 30-40 minutes walking around the two-level display area. There's a lot of good displays here with "just enough" text to keep you informed without boredom.

On the way to the visitor center each day we kept coming across two orphaned moose calves. The mother had been (illegally) shot and killed by someone unknown about two weeks previously and the rangers were trying to figure out how to capture the calves in order to ship them to a wildlife care facility. If they couldn't capture the calves it was expected they wouldn't survive through the upcoming winter. (Note: D had a business trip to India about two weeks after we got back from the Alaskan trip. The hotel delivered USA Today each morning, and I happened to notice one day that the news blurb for Alaska reported that rangers at Denali had managed to capture the calves.)

The orphaned moose calves hanging around the entrance to Denali National Park. We saw rangers out here every time we passed by, directing traffic and making sure no one got too close.

Finally, we did a nice little loop trail walk that took us about 45 minutes or so. We started at the Taiga trailhead located just across the road bordering the parking lot next to the Visitor Center (the RED trail on the map in the links at the right), then turned left on the Rock Creek Trail (blue trail), before turning left again on the Meadow View Trail (black dashed line), and finally left again on the Roadside Trail (yellow trail) to get back to the parking lot.

This is the view from along the Meadow View Trail. Gorgeous scenery!

Back at the car we headed over to Prospector Pizza for dinner. This is a VERY busy place. It took us about 45 minutes to get seated, and then dinner itself was leisurely - it took about 2 more hours. D chatted with our waitress and, commenting on her Slavic-like accent, learned that she was from Bulgaria. As D managed some staff in Sofia and had traveled there recently he was surprised to find out that he had heard of her hometown - she was from Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria. We got back to DDH about 10PM tired but satisfied.

W, M, and D wait for wives to finish shopping at the gift stop next to Prospector's Pizza.

Day 3: June 21, 2016 (at Denali)

D, E, R, and A started this day off with a move to another room at DDH. When we booked (and grabbed that last three rooms available) Ann had let us know that this would happen. The room we were first booked into was already booked for the second night of our stay so we were moved to another room. Our first room had a sauna in it, so I'm guessing that this was the attraction that caused someone else to book it. We actually liked our 2nd room more, so it all worked out OK.

After another tasty breakfast we headed over to Miner's Market and Deli, which was less than a mile from DDH. Here we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the fridge and added some bags of chips, granola bars, etc. to make our own bag lunches for our shuttle bus trip into the park. The shuttles were running late and when we got there for our 10A shuttle the 930A group was still waiting. Our bus came in about 10:10A and we loaded up for our day with our driver Ken, from Kentucky. As per the recommendations from Ann and Terry (and backed up by Cruise Critic posters) we sat on the left hand side of the bus.

Ken was AWESOME! Unlike the "official" brown narrated tour buses, the green shuttle buses do not promise any narration. However, Ken kept up a steady stream of commentary and basically gave us a full tour for the price of a shuttle. I've read of others who had shuttle drivers who did little more than drive, so we got really lucky.

The day was a bit overcast which did nothing to detract from the beauty of the scenery...but does mean that our photos fail to really do justice to what we saw. The bus makes bathroom stops about every 75-90 minutes. The windows on the bus did have a tendency to fog up pretty regularly. The bus had paper towels available, but had we anticipated this problem we would have actually brought a cloth towel with us to wipe down the window more regularly.

Our shuttle bus (foreground) at the first bathroom stop. That's our driver, Ken, standing at the doorway to the bus. There were usually buckets of water and squeegees available at the rest stops so folks could wash down the outside of their windows if they wished to do so.

At this time of day (it was about 1130A or so at our first bus stop) it was a bit damp out. To the left you can see the bathrooms located here. In the background you can see that a tan narrated tour bus has also arrived.

Here was a cow with two calves caught on the road between two buses. She was clearly trying to find a safe way off the road, but this section featured a cliff wall on our right hand side and a sheer drop off to our left. The buses both remained stopped to give the animals a chance to make choices.

The cow finally decided to attempt to move along the steep drop immediately to the left of our bus. The river is probably about 100' below the road. Although not obvious in the photo, the land drops sharply just 1 to 2 feet beyond where the animals are currently walking. The cow was carefully selecting where to go, no doubt evaluating whether her calves would be able to safely follow her.

This panoramic photo attempts to capture the amazing vista of Polychrome Pass.

One of the most elusive photos of our trip: Sixteen year old R, who normally would shy away from the camera. Mom E is to his right. I ambushed him here.


Our only bear sighting of the whole trip. I rushed this photo just before he moved to his left, behind the bush in the foreground.

At the Eileson Visitor Center (our turn-around point) Ken announced that he'd be starting his return trip in about 45 minutes. Because the day was a bit cold and dreary we decided not to take any of the hiking trails around the VC so were able to return with Ken without having to worry about securing spaces on other buses departing later. However, had the weather been nicer we would have stuck around. Frankly, we were surprised that "our" bus would only stop for 45 minutes. It would seem to make so much more sense for each bus to wait at least 75-90 minutes in order to allow "its" passengers more time to explore while still providing them with guaranteed return seats. I'm sure it all works out in the end...but a surprise. We did lose two passengers at Eileson: a couple of bikers came up on our bus and were met by a friend (who biked in from Wonder Lake). Together, they were planning to bike out of the park during the rest of the day - a journey of 66 miles. Ah, to be younger!

We explored the (small) Visitor Center, which did include a nice picture window for photographing The Mountain. Of course, we couldn't see Denali through the overcast. That viewing would have to wait for another day. The VC does have a nice scale model of the area, showing various paths to scale the mountain.

An unusual item is on display outside the VC - a set of moose skulls with interlocked horns. Apparently two males fighting things out in a mating ritual got tangled with one another and eventually died in tandem.

Following a long day on the bus we were ready for a quiet dinner, and (on recommendation from Terry and Ann) we went to the Black Diamond Grill. As this was out near DDH and not Glitter Gulch it wasn't as busy as all those places in walking distance of the major hotels. The portions were HUGE, and quite good. The menu sample linked at the right is representative - it doesn't include the BBQ pork ribs I had which were among the best I've EVER had. Only later did I determine we'd been a few hundred feet from another geocache that I could have grabbed without any problems!

After a long day it was back to DDH for our final night before a long train ride to Anchorage and meeting up with the rest of our traveling circus.