Alaska Adventure Day 11: Anchorage to Denali National Park

We had a 9:30 departure so we had time for a hearty Alaska breakfast. Scott and Nick had recommended the Snow City Café, a few blocks from the hotel. The place was bustling with both tourist and locals (always a good sign). Service was typically Alaskan…slow, but with a smile. When we saw reindeer sausage on the menu, we knew that eggs, toast, hash browns and “sausage” were a must. The sausage was great- a bit like an Italian sausage/polish sausage- not your typical breakfast sausage. The toast was sourdough-with homemade strawberry jam.

It was then back on the bus for our 6 hour drive to Denali. Our first stop was at Miller’s Ice Cream Shop in Houston – offering ‘the best ice cream in Alaska’. It was pretty darn good- we had a huge scoop of some kind of espresso/chocolate chip ice cream.

Driving through Alaska is not only scenic- but there are NO billboards. It’s a state law! We drove through the little town of Palmer, known for its’ world record veggies: a 17 pound carrot, a 300 pound pumpkin and a 116 pond cabbage. Everything is big here in Alaska. Palmer also had a WalMart recognized as the leader in sales of Duct Tape in the entire Walmart chain. We also noticed that Alaska doesn’t have “Dollar Stores”- but has “$1.25 Stores”. The town of Healy, with an average income of $60,000, made it the wealthiest in Alaska. Their coal plant has the cleanest burning coal in the world.

Finally we got our first look at Denali National Park and some distant- but fairly clear- views of Mt McKinley (“Denali”, the “High One”, to the natives), part of the 600 mile long Alaska Range. Mt McKinley, base elevation of 2000’, towers to 23,320 feet, the highest mountain in North America.

It was almost 4:00 before we got settled in at our hotel, the McKinley Village. After the ship and the hotels in Alyeska and Anchorage, this was fairly spartan- definitely a “lodge” feeling. We were given our 7:45 AM start time for our tour in the morning- and quickly realized that we’d have to find something for breakfast - or have the over-priced hotel buffet breakfast. We grabbed the shuttle into “town”. The trip, with several stops took almost 30 minutes- and we were dropped at the sister hotel “in town”. Basically ‘town’ was a combination of hotels-with large gift shops- and a strip of small gift shops. We found a small grocery store and bought some juice and muffins for breakfast and quickly grabbed the shuttle back. The dinner options at the “Village” were a high priced restaurant menu or a bar menu. We opted for a halibut dinner at the bar—and were presented with 4 huge, heavily battered filets. We made a bit of a mess pulling the breading off and eating the fish.