This was my favorite lodge.
It may have been considered more remote but I thought it was much nicer than the Princess lodge we just left. After all, how many times have you opened a door with antlers for handles.
A shuttle takes you around the property and all of the drivers were great. A female moose gave birth to twins the day before we got there. The little ones were too small to move far so she was right there beside the road. The drivers always stopped so we could get a glimpse of her through the trees. Try as I might I couldn’t get a clear shot.
We even walked down in hopes of getting a shot without bus windows but for such a large animal, she and the babies were hidden well.
The lodge was afraid all the attention would stress Mama Moose and that she might charge and injure a guest in an attempt to protect her babies. They said if people kept going down there they would be forced to make her move so we only made the one attempt. We didn’t want her forced to move babies so young.
The main pastime at this lodge was Denali (Mt. McKinley) watching. They even had an alert system similar to a wake up call. If you wanted a call when the mountain was visible you signed up and got a phone call, no matter what time, when the clouds cleared and the mountain could be seen.
I must have been getting tired at this point because there was a horse drawn wagon ride that I wanted to take but I forgot all about it until we were boarding the bus to leave!
We didn’t do any tours here. I was on the courtesy internet quite a bit wrapping up details of my job offer so that I could be sure to have a job when I got back from vacation. They had a great gift shop with some of the most unique and reasonably priced souvenirs of our trip. We did quite a bit of shopping here.
Even though we were farther in to the interior or maybe because we were, spring was really springing here. Temps were getting up to 60+, almost breaking the 70 mark. That was the trigger for Alaska’s unofficial state bird to make it’s appearance.
These mosquitoes are huge and plentiful. One of our new friends had bug repellant plastic bracelets and shared some with us. To my surprise they worked.
Denali (the mountain) watching was really interesting. When we got up in the morning the sky over the Alaska range was overcast but the mountains, except for Denali stood out clearly.
The line of mountain tops was so well defined it was hard to believe there was a “missing mountain”. About mid- morning Denali suddenly popped out of the overcast.
Cloud banks drifted and shifted in front of her but that only added to her mystique.
We spent a relaxing morning mountain watching before we had to climb back on the bus for the last leg of our journey to Anchorage where we’d be reunited with our luggage and spend the night before our flight home and back to reality.