Denali |
Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, has been visible on the average of one out of every ten days this summer. You might think I was very lucky to take the 66 mile bus tour into the park on one of those days. But I think it is just good karma. The weather during the ten days we were in Alaska was some of the warmest and clearest of the year.
Denali |
A misty cloud swept over the mountain in the afternoon, making it surreal. On the ride out of the park, the coulds shrouded the peaks and swept down valleys.
It was fall in Denali and the foliage of the trees and shrubs was vibrant
yellow, red, and orange. The grandeur of
Denali National Park is amazing.
We took the Denali-Anchorage Connection bus back to Anchorage where rented
a car for the drive to Seward. Our first
day in Seward we took a guided tour to Exit Glacier, the only glacier in Kenai
Fjords National Park accessible by road (or a short walk from the parking
lot). It is managed by the National Park
Service which has an exhibit and research center. Although the glacier is not particularly
impressive compared to the others we saw, the information center gave us a much
better understanding of the formation of Harding Ice Field and the glaciers it
feeds. Climate change is causing the
glaciers to shrink more rapidly each year.
It is part of the earth’s cycle of ice ages and warm climate, known as
the Milankovitch cycles, caused by the change in the tilt of the earth’s axis. There are five known ice ages, with the most
recent ending about 10,000 years ago. Now
we are in the middle of the cycle. But
the new factor of man-made carbon is dramatically increasing
the warming trend. Will it prevent the
next ice age that would naturally occur about 14,000 years from now?
Or will another asteroid, like the one that created the Chicxulub crater
and the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, hit the earth first?
The next day we took a six hour whale watching and glacier cruise. It was
a clear, warm, and calm day.
We drove to Homer, the halibut capital of the world, where we had planned
to kayak at Kachemak Park, across the bay from the Homer Spit. But it was too windy and rough for the water
taxi to take us across the bay. At the
time, I thought that I had used all my good karma for this trip. But a few days later I learned that while we
were prevented from kayaking because of wind and roughs seas, Denali Park was
having the first blizzard of the season and the park was essentially closed. It was incredible that we were in Denali the
last days before winter arrived.
The cruise
guide said it was the best day they had all year … karma. We saw orcas, gray whales, porpoises, sea
lions, puffins, and Holgate Glacier.
It was a
fantastic day on the water and made us thankful to be able to experience the
beauty of nature.and took a hike through a preserve north of Homer.
We did not see much wildlife on the hikes, but we saw thousands of mushrooms. On our drive back to Anchorage we stopped at Kenai Lake and kayaked for a few hours. We saw loon and several salmon jumping, and a pair of swans on another lake.
It was another beautiful clear day. On our last day in Alaska took a guided historical tour of Anchorage in a trolley car. The tour guide was excellent and we learned about the history of Anchorage and the effect of the 1964 earth quake. It started to rain while we we were waiting for our flight ... karma.Alaska is described as the last frontier. We saw only a small section of the state, but it was enough for me to appreciate its vastness, splendor and wilderness. Next on my bucket list are the Galapagos, New Zealand, and Tahiti/Bora Bora.
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