Alaska Land and Sea Tour Volendam - Blog

[Alaskafitzway]

We went on a HAL Land and Sea Alaska tour in the beginning of August. We started with the land portion, and finished with the cruise. It was fantastic.

 

We arrived in Anchorage a day before we needed to for our tour. We still booked transfers from the airport to the Westmark through HAL, and everything went fine. Our luggage was collected from us right next to the luggage Carousel, and then we walked a short distance to the HAL desk where the organized us and loaded us into buses. We traveled to the Westmark and there was initially some confusion. The HAL folks told us to go to the desk because we were a day early for our tour, and the front desk told us that they had already given our keys to the the tour folks. It was pretty quickly sorted out and we got our keys. We had been traveling for almost 15 hours and were pretty tired, but the rooms were very nice and clean, our luggage was delivered promptly, and it was still light out so we decided to take a walk around. First here's the view from our room in the Westmark.

 

The Westmark is in a fairly busy part of town. We were planning to walk down to find the train station where we would be taking a train in the morning to Seward for a trip that we booked on our own, but it was a little far away, so we decided to around the area close to the hotel a bit. There were lots of tourist shops, which didn't have much of interest, but the flowers were beautiful - these hanging baskets were all over town.

 

Our bus driver who had driven us from the airport had also pointed out a walking path that ran along the Cook Harbor not far from the hotel, so we took a short walk there as well while looking for a place to eat. Here's the view from the walking path -

 

So now on to Dinner. We were pretty exhausted by now, and we had been up for almost 20 hours. We had planned to go to the Glacier Brewhouse which is directly across the street from the hotel, but they were on a 90 minute wait. Instead we went back to the hotel and ate in their dining room. The meal was delicious, and it wasn't just because we were tired and famished. There were several folks who stopped by the open kitchen to than the chef. The Salmon was very good, and the pasta was also very nice and filling. They serve their wine in two different sizes, 5 oz or 8 oz, and the house wine by the glass was quite good for a house wine. The prices were high, but they are high in Alaska. We were quite satisfied.

 

Day 2 - We came in a day early so that we could spend a day in Kenai Fjords. We arranged the tour through Kenai Fjords Tours. We purchased a train ride down, on the Alaska Railway, and then the 6 hour boat tour and a bus ride back. We did not purchase the upgraded rail tickets for the upgraded dome cars because we were traveling on the McKinley explorer as part of our HAL cruise the following day and we just didn't think it was necessary. It turned out to be a good decision. The basic rail cars do have a domed part that anyone can go to, and the open platforms at the end of each car are the best place for pictures anyway.

It was a fairly overcast day with drizzle. We took a cab to the train station - a 5 minute ride from the Westmark. We had received vouchers from the Kenai Fjords folks by e-mail and we traded those in for our train tickets at the train station.

The scenery was stunning even in the rain and clouds.

Here is a picture of the train that we took. This is the same train that the McKinley Explorer is hooked to the back of, but we were going south instead of north.

We saw some wildlife along the way, and also some very blue glaciers. It's hard to get an idea of the beauty since it was so gray and cloudy, but here is one of the Glaciers that we passed.

Once we arrived in Seward, there was a Kenai Fjords bus waiting to transfer us the short distance to the boat docks. Since the weather was bad, the seas were very choppy and many of the tours were getting cancelled, but ours was not cancelled.

[Alaskafitzway]

There were two tour companies that did this 6 hour tour. The decision that we made to take the Kenai Fjords Tours boat was that it was a smaller boat and a Catamaran. The other tour company has larger boats, and apparently a big prime rib lunch buffet. We just had chicken ceasar wraps for lunch, but we weren't going for the food, and we felt that we made the right choice since our tour was not cancelled.

The seas were 8 feet, so it was really rough in places. We had to cross some open water before we got into the bay where we would see the glaciers etc... There were a lot of people on the boat that were very sick. I am prone to sea sickness and I did get nauseous, but took a second Dramamine and was then fine. My husband and son stayed outside, which was probably the best idea and they were also fine. If you're prone to motion sickness, this tour can be tough on a bad weather day. Also you need rain gear because you do get pretty wet. It was worth the trip though. We saw lots of wildlife.

Harbor Seals

A whole pod of Orca Whales - which I didn't get very good pictures of -

 

We stopped at a place called three hole, where the sea had carved holes through some high rocks in the water forming arches. This provided some pretty pictures

 

Once we got into the bay, things calmed down considerably. We stopped at the Aialik Glacier and the ice was breaking off and falling into the water (calving) and it made huge loud cracking noises.

We also saw adorable Sea Otters everywhere.

We saw Auklets and Sea Lions and Puffins. My husband had wanted to see a puffin, and this is apparently the most common place to see them in the summer.

 

When we finished on the boat we had about an hour before the bus would arrive to take us back to Anchorage. There were some nice souvenir shops close to the boat dock and we picked up some gifts. There was also a little restaurant right across from the boat dock called The Bakery where we ordered some really good sandwiches and burgers to go for the bus ride back. The bus ride back to Anchorage is about an hour shorter than the train ride and so we were glad that we decided to take the bus back It had been a long day and we slept most of the way on the bus. We were dropped off at the Museum, about 5 blocks from the Westmark. We walked back to the hotel and got right to bed because our HAL journey was starting early the next morning. I'll post that soon, with more pictures.

[cruisinjudy]

Love it so far!!

[durangoscots]

Great pictures!!! Thanks for posting. Look forward to rest.

 

Susan

[puli]

Thanks for the review....hope to do this exact tour/cruise nexr year!

[erewhon]

Thanks for beginning your review, great photos.

Looking forward to the remainder.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Off to a great start.

Love your pictures.

Looking forward to rest of your review.

[Keith1010]

Enjoying your review so far.

 

Keith

[jbhcw]

Thanks for posting:) Looking forward to the rest of your review...love the pictures!

[Alaskafitzway]

We woke early and put our bags out for pick up. We had tags in our welcome envelope and instructions as to when the bags should be out, and when we would meet our bus. We were able to tag as many bags as we wanted. The daily routine was that as you arrived at each location, you were provided a packet that had any changed luggage tags, and any information on included activities, booked excursions, and bags out and departure times for the next day. It was really nice to do it this way so that you didn't need to hold onto a lot of paperwork and keep track of things. They arrived just as you needed them.

We gathered in the lobby of the Westmark and met some of the outer travelers in our group. There were 44 of us assigned to our group. We satyed together through the land portion of the tour. We took the same bus, same car on the McKinley explorer, kept the same tour guide and bus driver etc...

 

We boarded a bus for the short ride to the Alaska Railway train station. We had received our train vouchers and car and seat assignments in our packet the night before, so it was very painless to get into the train car. The train ride to Denali is about 8 hours, but the train car is wonderful. You have a car manager, who points out wildlife and scenery along the way. The seats are huge. There is a car bartender who is available for any drinks either with or without alcohol. You are seated in the upstairs of the glass domed car, and you go downstairs for meals. We were offered breakfast downstairs but had already eaten at the hotel, so we didn't take advantage of that.

Here is a picture of the inside of the train car

The scenery along the way is really beautiful, and as you can see by the pictures, there is really no bad seat for viewing. We saw a large moose grazing in a field along the train tracks shortly after leaving Anchorage.

There was a nice deal for kids or anyone who likes soda where you could purchase a plastic water bottle with a lid and straw, and have the refilled as many times as you wanted. It was also good for the train ride from Denali to Fairbanks. I ended up using the water bottle all along the way filled with water each morning as we headed out. It had a straw, but also sealed closed so that it could be carried in a bad without concern of spilling.

On the McKinley Explorer cars, on the lower level, there are open viewing platforms between the cars. I spent some time there so that I didn't get the reflection of the glass in my pictures. We passed lots of rivers, and small lakes etc... As we rounded one corner I saw this little gnome away from home floating in the river. Apparently it's a little game that they play and he is moved every couple of days, and people try to find him. I had my camera ready so I took this photo.

We did eat lunch in the dining section on the McKinley Explorer. The food was very good. The upstairs seats more than the downstairs, so you needed to wait until you were called to eat, but it went quickly. The dining car was staffed with quite a few waitresses, and service was good. We enjoyed our meals, and the Brownie and Ice Cream dessert.

 

The train travels on a single track that is used by both north and southbound trains. At one point we had to pull off onto a small side track to allow the train traveling the opposite way to pass. One of the train conductors actually gets out and manually pulls the switch to allow our train to go off to the pull-out, and allow the other train to pass. He was standing among the fireweed (pink flowers) waiting for the other train to pass, and I took this picture. Fireweed, we later found, was very abundant all throughout Alaska. It is named because it is the first vegetation to return after a forest fire. Apparently the flowers and their progression to the top of the plant signal to the locals how long it will be until winter returns to that area.

 

There was a lot of spectacular scenery along the way.

 

Eventually we arrived at the train station in Denali. We were met by a transfer bus that took us to the McKinley Chalet resort where we would spend the next two nights. We were in the Canyon lodge, which was really nice. It was all wood and the rooms were nice. The lodge part where we stayed was fairly new, but was down a fairly steep hill from the main part of the hotel. It didn't present a problem for us, but for folks with mobility issues, there were shuttles. We didn't see them come around very often.

Here's a picture of the lobby of our hotel. There was lots of open space where you could sit and read, or use the free wifi.The rooms were clean and roomy. We enjoyed our stay in this hotel.

 

 

We had booked a glacier landing on Mt McKinley for the evening that we arrived. The weather down in the park was fine, but apparently the weather on the mountain was not conducive to landing. The folks who run the flight tour met us at the lobby of the hotel and were very up front with us that they would not be able to land. They offered us the option to just fly around the mountain for a reduced price, or to try again the next day or just get a full refund. We took the refund since it was a very expensive excursion and we didn't feel that a fly by in bad weather would be worth the cost. We did learn that the other tour in the Helicopter, which lands on a different glacier was able to go, so that might have been the better tour to book if you really want to land on a glacier. We had other folks in our group who did the Helicopter, and they were very happy with the experience.

 

Once we knew that we were not going on the flight, we went searching for somewhere to have dinner. We went across the road to a group of stores and restaurants just across the street from the hotel. Our tour guide had recommended a place among that group of stores called Prospector Pizza. We ended up there for dinner. They were on a wait, but there was a big outside area where you could wait, that had a beautiful view of the Alaska Mountain Range. They had lots of different beer on tap, and so we sat out in the fresh air and had a glass of beer and waited about 20 minutes for our table. Once inside we realized that they were waiting for a large tour group to arrive, and that had taken up a lot of tables. It was a huge place, and we were concerned that it would take a long time to get our food, but they did an excellent job of serving every table, including the large group, very quickly. The pizza was delicious, and the restaurant was very interesting.

 

We headed back to the hotel after dinner to get some rest and be ready for our morning trip into the park. I'll post that on the next post since I can only put 6 pictures in each post.

[puli]

This is a wonderful narrative! you said there was no "bad" side on the train but if you had your choice which side would you pick..".port" or" starboard". And I guess more importantly, Do you have a choice?

[Alaskafitzway]

In the morning we needed to leave our bags out before leaving for our park tour, and would return to the hotel before departing for Fairbanks, but we didn't want to take our Carry-ons with us to the park. They had a nice little luggage check off the court yard where you could leave any bags that you had not sent along to the bus.

After stashing our carry on bags, we had breakfast at the Sourdough Cafe which is onsite at the hotel. You could have a full buffet, a continental breakfast, or just get an omelet to order. They were very flexible. The table next to us just wanted oatmeal, which they allowed at a reasonable price. The restaurant had tin coffee cups and plates, and kerchief napkins, and a sort of cowboy motif. The breakfast was good, and fast. The coffee wasn't great, but there is a Starbucks in the hotel lobby if you're in need of better coffee.

 

We then boarded a Park bus for the park. I will note that a park ranger was taking us on our park tour, but our HAL tour guide Matthew still met us in the lobby, and made sure that everyone was comfortable and had everything that they needed before boarding the bus. Matthew was organized and really fantastic. He went out of his way to make sure that everyone had a great time.

 

We headed off to the park on a school bus. Not the regular luxury coaches, but it was fine. We stopped at the visitors center to watch a short movie on the history of the park, how it had been settled, the building of the road etc... It was very interesting, and not long. We then boarded the bus again for our visit to the park. You can not take private vehicles very far into the park so these school buses are the only way to go.

 

We saw a lot of wildlife along our journey. Almost right away we saw a couple of Moose

 

Next we stopped at a ranger cabin. These buildings were built when they were first building the road into the park, and they served as dining halls and food storage locations for the workers. They still serve a purpose today for the park's rangers in the winter. They are patrolling in the bitter cold and can come to these cabins to light a fire, get a warm meal, and have a warm place to sleep. There was a park employee who did a brief talk, and then we got too look at the cabin.

 

 

Next to the cabin is also a shelter for any dogs.

 

 

After seeing the cabin, we traveled further into the park. The scenery was beautiful with lots of mountains in the distance, and bright skies.

 

We came across a couple of Caribou grazing in a dry riverbed.

 

We could see Mt. McKinley, or as the Athabaskan people call it - Denali in the distance, but it was partially obscured by clouds. We learned that only about 30% of the visitors to the park actually see Denali. It is so large that it creates it's own weather and is often covered in clouds.

We drove through gravel roads deeper and higher into the park to a location where we would try to view Denali.

When we arrived we were met by an Athabaskan woman named Carol who gave a very interesting talk about the area where 4 generations of her family have lived. She was very knowledgeable about the area and her story was really good.

 

As we were there, the clouds parted briefly and we were able to clearly see both peaks of Denali. We felt pretty lucky since our bus driver who drives the route 5-6 days a week had only seen the mountain 15 times all summer.

 

As we headed back out of the park we had another pretty rare sighting as a Lynx was spotted right next to the road. He disappeared into the bushes pretty quickly, before I could get a picture.

 

You could book longer excursions deeper into the park, and if we had a littel more time, we probably would have preferred that. The area and the lodge were beautiful, and it would have been nice to be able to spend some more time here. We understand that next year this land sea tour will be changed somewhat and will not include all of the driving between Fairbanks and Dawson may be replaced with a flight, and that this might allow for an additional day in Denali. It's just a rumor at this point, but something to look for.

 

We returned to the hotel and had a few hours before we were to transfer to the train station for the ride to Fairbanks, so we returned to the Sourdough for lunch. They had good hamburgers, and also a good soup and salad bar. We were able to relax in the lobby for a while before our bus left. We reclaimed out carry on luggage from the luggage check, and met the group at the front of the hotel for our transfer to the train station.

[Alaskafitzway]

This is a wonderful narrative! you said there was no "bad" side on the train but if you had your choice which side would you pick..".port" or" starboard". And I guess more importantly, Do you have a choice?

 

Honestly on this train there is no bad spot, and there is about equal scenery on each side. You can see clearly from anywhere in the upstairs seating area, there are windows that go around the entire top of the car. You can also move and walk freely through the car all the time, so no I wouldn't say that there is one better side. We had 4 people with us and we didn't have a choice, they seated two of us on one side of the aisle and two on the other side in the same row.

[puli]

Honestly on this train there is no bad spot, and there is about equal scenery on each side. You can see clearly from anywhere in the upstairs seating area, there are windows that go around the entire top of the car. You can also move and walk freely through the car all the time, so no I wouldn't say that there is one better side. We had 4 people with us and we didn't have a choice, they seated two of us on one side of the aisle and two on the other side in the same row.

 

Thanks, having no choice makes it easier!

[Alaskafitzway]

We left Denali for Fairbanks once again via the McKinley Explorer train. About the fist hour out of Denali provided beautiful scenery, and after that it really turned to wilderness and a lot of trees.

 

We did see a number of moose along the way, including a mother and babies.

We arrived in Fairbanks at about 8 PM but it was still very light out. Fairbanks is about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle and it stays light here in August until about 11:30 . The Westmark Fairbanks is a large and modern hotel. The rooms are quite modern, and as usual they were clean and comfortable. One of the things that we appreciated about all of the Westmarks was that each bed had 3 pillows of varying degrees of firmness.

The Westmark Fairbanks had a nice giftshop, and we got a fair amount of our gifts from here.

Since we got into town and it was still so light out, we decided to take a quick walk into town.

We found that the stores were all closed well before we arrived. Most shops had hours that were something like 11:00 AM till 6:00 PM. We did find a pretty statue and fountains in town that we took some pictures of.

 

The next morning we got up and had an early breakfast. The breakfast was a large buffet that had almost anything you could want. We enjoyed it very much although we heard others in our group who felt that it was not very good. We found nice eggs benedict, and good breads and sweet rolls. I guess everyone has different tastes.

Our tour guide recommended a visit to the visitors center in Fairbanks, and also said that there was a bike trail that you could walk along the river instead of walking down the roads in town. We got a map at the front desk and headed out. We did find the bike trail without too much trouble and it was a nice walk into town. We did spend some time at the Visitors center, and were very glad that we had gone. It was free, and had a very nice display of Alaska through the 4 seasons. It was spread throughout a number of rooms with short movies, and life size models of different kinds of places that people live in Alaska and a number of different native tribes. It was really good.

Just outside the visitors center is the famous Antler Arch that you see in a lot of pictures of Fairbanks. We took pictures there as well.

 

We also walked along the path further towards town and came upon the World War 2 memorial which was dedicated to the cooperation between the Siberian and Alaskan pilots.

 

We then walked into the area of town that had the shops. Many of them were still not open. We did stop at the Fudge Pot and got some fudge to take on the road with us. We also noticed what looked like parking meters in the parking lot, but they were actually electric outlets at each parking spot. It gets so cold here in the winter that the cars all have plug in engine block heaters. You can see the plugs hanging out of the front grill of the cars. People keep them plugged in at home, and many of the public parking lots have these little outlets in each spot to plug in.

 

We walked back to the hotel along the streets and stopped at an little house that was serving as an artist co-op to search for souvenirs. We didn't find anything that we were looking for, but they folks who ran it were very nice and shared a lot of information about Jade which we didn't realize was found in Alaska. Next stop will be Tok Alaska.

[Alaskafitzway]

Shortly after lunch, we left Fairbanks for Tok - really just a stop along the way to break up the ride to Dawson City. We boarded a luxury coach and met our driver who would be with us until Dawson. He actually would ordinarily accompany the group all the way through to the cruise, but he was getting married the next week, so we switched drivers in Dawson.

Our driver, like most of the HAL employees that we met along the way was young and enthusiastic, and very conscientious.

The ride to Tok was scenic and we had a number of stops along the way. Just out of Fairbanks we went through North Pole Alaska. It was a cute little town and the merchants take the name seriously. Lightpoles were decorated in read and white stripes, and even the McDonalds got into the spirit.

We had some good views of the Alaska Mountain Range on a perfect sunny day -

 

We also drove fairly close to a large wildfire that had been burning for a while. Apparently they don't attempt to put the fires out unless they threaten homes so a lot of them burn untouched for a long while. We did see some helicopters trying to put this one out, it was quite close to the road.

@We stopped at a place called Rika's Roadhouse where we were able to get something to eat and take pictures of the Alaska Pipeline that travels along this area. Here it is crossing a river.

 

The Roadhouse was a collection of a few buildings and a cafeteria style restaurant. Apparently the pie was very good, but otherwise the food was not great. It was a nice break in an 8 hour drive, and the weather was beautiful, so it was worth getting out to stretch the legs and get some pictures.

 

We had some spectacular views of the fire along the way.

 

Eventually we arrived at the Westmark in Tok. Our tour guide had warned us that the hotel was more rustic than other places that we had stayed so far. It was an older hotel, but the rooms were clean, and the beds were comfortable. There wasn't much choice of places to eat so we headed for dinner at the restaurant in the main building of the hotel. We were glad we did, the food was really good. The Salmon was excellent.

 

After dinner we took a short walk around. The gift shop in the hotel was extensive and very nice. They also had a sense of humor - with shirts that said "Tok Alaska, we've never heard of you either"

 

Just next door to the hotel was another gift shop with some cabins in the back that you could rent. They also had some huskie puppies there that had just arrived that night. They had a grass roof, on their main building, which is fairly common from what we saw. They had something extra on their roof that we didn't often see though -

There wasn't a lot to see or do in Tok, but we were just there overnight, and we were leaving for Dawson City early in the morning. Here's a shot of Tok - all of it.

 

Apparently the folks in the Westmark in Tok believe that HAL will not go through this little town after this year, and that the hotel will likely close. The town itself is not something that I think anyone will miss too much, but the drive into Tok from Fairbanks, and even more the drive on the top of the world highway from Tok to Dawson are really beautiful, it will be a shame to miss those.

[Alaskafitzway]

We left Tok after having a nice breakfast in the restaurant onsite. We started assigned seating on the coach as well. The group was divided into three groups and on each of the remaining coach days, a different group boarded first so everyone had a chance to choose a seat in the front of the bus. We had heard that the ride to Dawson City was very pretty and we were lucky to be in the first group to board.

 

Right outside of Tok we saw a Moose in a small lake just beside the road. The coach stopped and we could take pictures. Following us was another coach, driven by our driver's brother, so both coaches stopped and the moose didn't care at all.

 

The ride to Dawson was 8 hours, and was going to be mostly on dirt roads. We were not really looking forward to it, but it passed very quickly because of the stops, and the scenery.

 

The first place we stopped was a little place called Chicken Alaska. The population is 3, but in the summer, a few more. They have a gift shop, and bar, and a restaurant. It's used by tourists, and also be people in the active gold mining camps near by.

 

If you wanted to use the facilities, you used the Chicken Poops which were actually very clean and nice -

 

Here's the whole set of buildings - the restaurant actually made a quick and very tasty burger for my son, who is 20 and always hungry. There were others in the group that got soup and that was also quite good.

 

 

Since the two drivers were brothers, we had a Chicken Dance contest between the two buses before we left Chicken to get back on the road. It was corny but everyone enjoyed it, and it helped break up the long drive. The tour guides and drivers were very good at making even the long drive days fun.

 

Shortly beyond Chicken, the road turns into a dirt road called Top of the World highway. We had to have a pilot truck travel ahead of us to warn us if there were cars coming the other way, or rocks in the road or large pot holes.

The road was actually well packed and in good shape despite the fact that it was dirt. Here's the pilot truck that led us -

We passed a few active gold mining operations along the way -

 

And at one point our driver - Lance stopped to try his hand at panning for some gold in the river - he came back to the bus with a pan full of gold....covered Hershey kisses ;-)

 

I'll continue the ride to Dawson in the next post since I already have 6 photos in this post.

[Alaskafitzway]

We continued along the road towards Dawson - here's a photo of an off ramp on the dirt road, it gives you a good idea of what the road was like.

 

On the way to Dawson we would pass into Canada - Yukon Territory, we stopped at the border and took some pictures looking back on the welcome to Alaska sign on the opposite side of the road. You can see why they call this highway the Top of the World highway.

 

 

 

We went through Customs at the Canadian border, which consisted of the customs agents coming onto the coach and checking everyone's passports. It was pretty quick and we were on our way. The Pilot truck left us just before the border and headed back to Chicken.

 

We continued along and the road comes in above Dawson city so that you can look down on the whole city as you arrive. When you come in from this direction, you are across the Yukon river from Dawson, so you need to get on a ferry to get to the town. The ferry can fit only one coach and a couple of cars. Also the ferry just pulls up to the river bank at the end of the road. Each morning they build a dirt ramp to the level of the river that the cars and buses will use to get into the ferry. Here's what it looked like as the cars departed the Ferry just before we got on.

 

We crossed the Yukon River in a short ferry ride to another dirt ramp on the other side. When you get off the Ferry you are right at the edge of town. The Westmark hotel in Dawson is built to look like it fits right into an old gold mining town. Here are the outside of the buildings - the hotel is spread across several buildings -

 

As with each of the Westmark hotels, when we pulled up, and army of employees met the bus and gave us our room keys and took our luggage as we exited the bus. I think that the longest we ever waited for our luggage to arrive in our rooms was about 5 minutes. It was extremely well organized and efficient.

 

The rooms at this hotel were very nice, clean and big. There was no air conditioning, but the fan that was in the room was all that we really needed. Here's a picture of our room -

 

 

We cleaned up a little bit and went over to the restaurant at the hotel to get some dinner. The Salmon, Pasta, Cod, and Salads were all very good. They also had some nice wines by the glass.

 

After dinner we did a paid excursion called "toast of the dome". We took a bus form the hotel up the a mountain top that overlooks Dawson to watch the sun set. It was very pretty, and you got a very good view of all of Dawson, and the Yukon and Klondike rivers. We also had some sparkling grape juice, and cookies and brownies. It was a nice end to the evening, and because of the fires that were in the area, we got some pretty colorful sunset pictures. It was definitely not a "must do" excursion, but it was fun. We returned to the hotel and most of us went to sleep, it had been a long day. More pictures of Dawson in my next posts.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Wonderful!!

[Alaskafitzway]

We had a morning float trip scheduled for our first morning in Dawson City. We had a nice breakfast at the restaurant at the Westmark and then headed out to the breezeway to meet our excursion leader. We happened to be the only ones booed on the morning excursion, which was nice. We loaded into a van with rafts on the back and drove a short distance out of Dawson to a launch point on the Klondike river. It was very quiet river, and very calm. I carried my camera gear with me and there was no concern of it getting wet.

 

We saw quite a few juvenile Bald Eagles along the river banks looking for fish. Here's one that was quite close. They didn't seem at all bothered by our presence.

Our guide was a young woman who was here for the summer working for HAL. She was quite knowledgeable about the river, and Dawson, and was a great guide.

 

The river was beautiful, and peaceful. Here's a picture from the raft.

 

 

We pulled off to the bank about half way through our trip and were given a snack and bottle of water. The snack was a delicious baked pepperoni roll and a fresh fruit bowl. Very nice. We then jumped back into the raft and headed towards town and the Yukon River. We ran into this adult Bald Eagle along the way.

 

We floated past a native community on the river where the houses were all built to serve the families for their entire lives. The walls are removable to make more or less rooms, when there are children in the home etc... Also the hallways are designed to accommodate wheelchairs for later in life. It was interesting. We also noticed that all of the homes had ladders on the roof. We asked our guide about it and she said that there had been a large fire in Dawson years ago and a lot of the town was lost. Since most of hte homes are heated by burning wood or coal or something, residents need to be able to put out chimney fires if they occur, so every house must have a ladder built into the roof to facilitate that.

 

We floated until the point where the Klondike and the Yukon joined. The rivers are very different colors because of their sources, here's a picture of the two rivers and where they joined.

 

When we got back to the landing area, we were greeted by the van again, but we decided to let them load the rafts and head out, and we walked the short distance back to the hotel.

 

The main street in Dawson is Front street and it is paved, but all of the other streets are packed gravel. The sidewalks are actually boardwalks. Front street and the surrounding streets have lots of shops and cafes and restaurants. There are also a couple of grocery stores in town. It's a lovely little town.

Here's a picture of the sidewalks on one street -

[Alaskafitzway]

When we returned from our float trip, we walked through town and back to the hotel. The hotel grounds had a number of gardens and little sets of tables and chairs where you could sit out and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.

 

In the afternoon we had one of the few included excursions on the trip. It was a paddle wheel ride down the Yukon. It was not really something that I would say was worth the time, but that may be because we had already been on the river and done the float trip. The boat was an older paddle wheel boat that went a short way down the river and then turned and came back up. We didn't see much of interest, and didn't cover much ground. All in all not too exciting. We did see the home of Cave Man Joe who lives along the banks of the yukon in a cave. He has lived there for 17 years. Here is his raft, that apparently he does use to go across the river into town. He had some other boats tied up at the dock as well though.

 

 

After the paddle wheel ride we headed back to the hotel for dinner. We considered going into town for dinner, but the restaurant at the hotel was good, and reliable so we returned there and were not disappointed.

 

Before we left for Whitehorse the next morning I ran down to Front Street to get a last picture of Dawson. We enjoyed our stay there.

[Alaskafitzway]

In the morning we left Dawson for the 9 hour ride to Whitehorse which would be our final land stop before meeting our cruise ship.

 

The drive was once again very scenic. We made several stops along the way to break up the trip, use the restrooms, and stretch our legs. Our first stop was at a funny little place called Moose Creek Lodge where they served Swiss pastries, and other baked goods. They also had some funny sculptures in the driveway and entrance area -

A Yukon Mosquito -Although I have to say, we had been warned before we came about the bugs and we never had any problems, we never opened the bug repellent that we brought and none of us get so much a single bite.

 

We headed along the road again and eventually joined back up with the Yukon river in a place called Minto. This was a small rest area/camp ground kind of place. They served a cafeteria style lunch of salad, chili, and iced tea and lemonade. There were rest rooms, showers and laundry facilities for travelers. We were only there long enough to have lunch and spend a few minutes sitting by the river -

 

We kept driving towards Whitehorse. We passed through the silver district and stopped at a place called Five fingers where there are a number of rock formation in the river that made it very difficult for the Stern Wheeler boats to traverse this part of the river as they headed for Dawson during the gold rush. Eventually they strung a cable to pull them through, but from the looks of it, even that must have been a challenge.

 

We made our final stop at a roadside shop/cafe that served cinnamon rolls that were almost as big as your head.

 

We finally arrived in Whitehorse. The hotel there is a little bit older, but again the rooms were of a nice size, and clean. There was no air conditioning, but fans were in all of the rooms and it was quite comfortable. We had booked a jet boat excursion in Whitehorse, so we decided to grab a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant. Again it was quite good. The entree salads, and Salmon were very good.

We met our excursion guide in the lobby after dinner for an 8PM boat ride. It was a short walk down a walking path a couple of blocks from the hotel to a boat launch. We were the only boat on the river, and we went quite a distance. The boat traveled at speeds up to 65 MPH. We went to some areas known for eagles, and we did see several juvenile and adult Bald Eagles on our ride. We also went to see a huge beaver dam, where a good portion of it was underwater to allow for entry when the river freezes over.

We really enjoyed the excursion and the young man who was driving the boat was very capable, and quite nice. Here's a view from along the river.

 

We headed back to the hotel and had a nice glass of wine in the bar at the hotel before heading back to our rooms for the night. The bar was small with a musician that had just finished up. It was a nice place to sit and grab a drink and they also had food. The booths were big and comfortable, and it was not crowded.

[PathfinderEss]

Really enjoying your review (blog) and can't wait for the rest of it. Your pictures are awesome, keep them coming.:)

[erewhon]

This is a wonderful review, Thank you.

[boaterette]

this is a very nice review. Your pictures are wonderful.