Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Thanks for help with trip!

A couple of month ago I posted a request on this forum for help planning a trip to Alaska. I had been up your way hunting a few times, but not with the wife on a vacation. Well I arrived back home in Northern Colorado early yesterday after a week on the Kenai Peninsula and a few days up by Denali. Great trip and thanks to all of you that offered help and suggestions on where to eat, go, hike and just have a good time.

Folks were very friendly and helpful everyplace we went. Anchorage you can have��.like most other large cities! We enjoyed everything on the Kenai from Seward to Homer�I think we hit most of the smaller places as well. Good food at small places and saw lots of wildlife.

Too bad the only way into Denali Park in on one of those buses�but I don�t how else you would do it without ruining it like Yellowstone or RMNP here in Colorado. My wife called the bus ride �the bus ride from hell�! Almost 9 hours with 50 �close� friends! Very few had ever seen a wild animal and had no idea where to look or how to find one. Even with the foggy windows I was able to spot three grizzlies, 30 or so Dall sheep, two wolves, 15 caribou, ptarmigan, fox and moose. People on the bus were asking my wife how I was able to spot the wildlife�to which she replied�.�most of those critters are on our wall at home�! Of course most thought that was terrible, but it stopped the stupid questions.

Best stupid comment of the day: I was watching a sow with two cubs. Everyone on the bus was trying to spot them and most finally did since they weren�t that far away. They were wondering why two were smaller than the one, to which I replied��the smaller ones are her two cubs. How do you know that�..was the question? My wife, now having fun with the comments said�.No I think one of the cubs is the sow�s sister's cub and she is raising it for her! People were amazed at how we knew that!!

You guys that live up there must have a million funny or stupid comments and questions you�ve heard over the years. Care to share?

I'll tell you my best-ever tourist question:

I'm retired now, but I worked for the Tongass National Forest for a number of years in the HQ in Ketchikan. I was coming back from a meeting on the dock, in uniform, when a nice, mid-50's type couple stopped me for a question. After a couple of nice comments about how beautiful Alaska is and what a good time they were having, the wife asked me their very puzzling to them question: "What's the elevation here?" I looked over the edge of the dock, noted that it was low tide, and suggested that our elevation was about 32 feet. Her husband looked me straight in the eyes and said: "Wow! I figured this far north it would be a lot higher than that!"

It was all I could do to convince them that, no, the ocean was pretty much the same worldwide.

But I worked 19 years in Colorado, in Durango and Lakewood, and I can assure you that your folks get the same level of questioning from your visitors .

Dennis

MD, I'm sure we get the same type of visitors in Colorado. I've just never been on a bus with 50 of them!

So, did you get a chance to do any fishing?



fish head

Fished one day in Homer and caught a couple of nice halibut...great trip!

It sounds like we had an almost identical itinerary on my first time up, and I'd have to echo almost every word of your trip. I did the short Denali bus trip, and I might add, my last, although every experience seems worth the memories. The bus/tour guide was very good, she had a ton of local info and a great personality, but me and buses and 50 close friends, as you say, don't mix too well. The "highlight" of the trip came when after a short, whispered conference with a driver coming back the other way, it was announced that we should all keep our eyes open, there was a report of a wolf in the area. Well lo and behold, within a minute or two, here comes this decrepit old pooch down the road with a blue tag in his ear, looking for all the world like an old circus performer that just wanted a bowl of cold water and a place in the shade to lie down. That, and again, as you say, trying to point out some bears to some folks who couldn't seem to see past the shoulder of the road. I wouldn't do it again, but in truth, I guess I wouldn't trade the memories of the day either, sometimes it's the oddball stuff of a day that makes it a keeper! I had a great time with a lot of the locals I met while traveling around, mostly I guess, in the small cafes, gin-joints and fishing. I was planning on going back again either next spring or fall, but lady luck may be smiling on me, and I might be headed back up this fall, fingers are crossed.

I took that bus ride some 30 years ago with a brother, and a sister and her family of 4. One of the best times I ever had. Sure, there were the totally clueless aboard, but somehow, within the first hour, we all bonded. Someone would ask an ignorant question (ignorance can be cured- stupidity can't), and about 5 answers down the line he or she would get a straight answer - no one got offended. And apparently no one chickened out either- as questions were often prefaced by, "Oh, God - here I go again!" or some such.

I doubt 40 or so stranger/friends ever laughed so much or so hard in 6 or 8 hours anywhere. I'm not a people person, but I sure had fun that day!

Incidently, we saw 37 of the "only about 50 grizzlies reside in Denali Park", as well as a black wolf (acting like a wolf), moose (several huge bulls, still in velvet), sheep in the distance (i.e. little white dots), and caribou, including a very respectable bull in the ditch, belly deep in water, 20 feet from the bus. He was only interested in keeping the bugs out of his nose. He'd raise his head, take a couple deep breaths, then bury his nose underwater again for as long as he could stand. IIRC, this was in late July or early August.

All those bears musta been a bunch of tourists, like us!

"What time do you turn the Northern Lights on?" is a favorite, as is "How old does a caribou have to be before it turns into a moose?" (Not posed on our bus tour, but picked up since)

One of the top questions in the Colorado mountains was always "At what elevation does a deer turn into an elk?", accompanied by "What time of the year does that happen?"

I'm telling you...there is a set of tourists who all come from the same place... .

Dennis

When I first came to Colorado three summers ago we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. I had brought my binoculars along and had spotted several groups of elk on the way up that of course no one else could see. We stopped at the top for lunch in a large pull off and a 100 yards or so below the parking lot were eight or ten elk - just right there. Not a single person managed to see them and EVERYONE who stopped there looked over the edge right where they were at.

Guess they all missed out on what they came to see.


fish head

When we first moved up here we decided to take the Denali bus tour. There were lots of questions similar to what has already been posted here but the one that sticks in our minds was during the drive through Polychrome Pass. One lady was looking out the window at the uphill side of the road and suddenly yelled out, "Hey driver, what are these pretty little yellow flowers growing all over the hillside?"

The driver stopped the bus, looked out and calmly replied, "Those would be dandelions."

A tourist asked me that same question last year in Sitka also.

All these replies got me thinking, remembering, and grinning more about the bus trip. I sat next to a lady by the name of Ethyl, she was a retired school teacher and was working, if I remember right, at some motel up in Glitter Gulch. I guess thinking back, she was probably worth the price of the ticket, she had some hilarious stories. And I remember this oriental lady sitting ahead of us, I kept trying to point animals out to her, and when she would finally see the little white or brown dot 300 yards away, she would get all excited and throw up her little point and shoot camera and snap a picture, complete with flash. I used to wonder how many nice, well-lit pictures she wound up with of the inside of the bus window?!
Heck, maybe I would do it again, good honest entertainment isn't easily come by. Might be the same thing they said to their friends about this old hillbilly!

Been on the bus twice in my life. Its such a rare thing for us to get there, that I'd do it again if I were passing by. I can ignore the others if need be.

Did you get to see the Mountain?

I've seen it both times and 3 or 4 times in either small commercial or bush plane flights... seem to be lucky that way.

I'm looking at a photo of the wife and I on our honeymoon in 95 with a full Denali in the background right now. We were not scheduled to go that far but the weather cleared, the Mountain spoke and no one had a schedule and it was a late afternoon bus so our driver drove... hard and fast to get closer. I still can't believe some folks didn't tip her for that extra effort. I know our tip was generous in our eyes at least.

Jeff