Estimated transit time from Fairbanks to Denali...3 1/2 hours. We stopped half way at a little town called Nenana on the Nenana River. Was hoping they would have a tee shirt that said "My Nana stopped in Nenana" but no luck. Maybe I'll make some...I'm sure there's a market for them. They did have a very nice shop, however, with beautiful items made by the local people. I picked up a lovely little birch basket which will be perfect to hold some jewelry. It is also one of stops on the Alaskan Railroad.
Before we knew it we were at the Denali Princess Lodge and it is very, very nice. Our room is great and we have the most beautiful view from our room...right along the river!
After a great lunch of pizza, we headed across the street to "glitter gulch", a group of souvenir and Alaskan craft stores. Of course we had to shop...isn't that why you travel??!! And get some goofy pictures!
Then it was a nice stop in the hot tub for Kim and I. Ahhhh...it felt wonderful and the view was to die for.
Dinner was the Music of Denali Dinner Theatre at the lodge. The food was ok...BBQ beef, salmon, mashed potatoes, succotash, salad. The show was disappointing. Not because of the young actors...they were enthusiastic and did the best they could with a poorly written show. We got some good laughs out of it though!!!
After dinner we had a Tundra Wilderness Golf excursion planned. We were excited to be playing golf under the midnight sun! We were picked up at 8:15 and were dropped off 15 minutes later at the saddest looking outfit you have ever seen. We knew the golf course wasn't going to be anything like we have in Florida, but no one there seemed to care about helping guests. There was no one around to assist with clubs or the cart. We just sort of found a cart that happened to have two sets of clubs on the back, obviously from someone who had left as their completed card was still in the cart. The clubs were probably older than me! We headed out to find hole one and that's where the true problems began. Nothing was clearly marked; it was hard to find the tee boxes; and there was horse shit everywhere on the course. Yuck!!! We managed through about seven holes and gave up. It was terribly disappointing :( We have complained to Princess, since the excursion was arranged through them. We wanted them to know that this excursion was truly not up to their standards. I do have to say, though, that it was cool to play golf at 10:00 at night and surrounded by beautiful mountains.
After a quick adult refreshment when we returned, we headed up to bed to get ready for our early 5:30 alarm to head into Denali National Park.
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