Day 8-June 6, 2014-Denali Jeep Excursion Tour
Got to stay in bed ‘til 7:00AM-WOOHOO!!! Again a sunny, warm day in the 60s. By now you know where we had breakfast, right? Denali Jeep Excursions picked us up at 9:15 for a 135 mile trip on a rough gravel highway road for a five hour trip into the Denali Wilderness. There were three Jeeps in our group, the guide, Rupert, in the lead one. We communicated by CB radio. At one point we saw a porcupine scurry into the bushes and we asked the guide to go grab him, drag him down into the road so we could take his picture. He declined. We stopped along the way for rests and snacks and to talk. Rupert was the driver of the shuttle for the ATV tour we took the other day. Seems a lot of people do several jobs here during the summer tourist season. Even at Denali Cabins there are a few people who do many jobs.
We got back to Denali Cabins about 3:00PM and actually had down time. The rest of the day was ours with nothing planned. We went into the rec room at the cabins, called the “Learn and Lounge” room and read for an hour then caught the shuttle into “town”, aka “Glitter Gulch”. This is where there are a lot of hotels used by the cruise ships, lots of souvenir shops, adventure companies where you could rent a kayak, sign up for a hike, go rafting, hire a plane, jet boat, helicopter or other activities and a few restaurants.
Our driver, Will noticed a mother moose and two calves right on the side of the road. After taking all these tours looking for wildlife here it is right in front of us. He stopped and took lots of pictures for us. It was really quite a sight.
We chose to have dinner at The Salmon Bake, a tradition in Denali, the building built on permafrost and leaning a little more every year. The table we sat at seemed to be leaning forward into the next table a bit. We ordered the salmon, which was great and came with actual vegetables, not fries, but the Cobb Salad looked amazing, crammed with huge shrimp and chunks of crab meat.
We got back to the cabins about 8:00 PM, went to read a bit more in the lounge and then off to bed. The entire staff at Denali cabins was amazing, friendly, helpful and thoughtful. Although Denali is all about the animals we will have great, happy memories of this leg of our adventure because of the people also. But time to move on.