My Alaska Trip Part 1

I had the best time in Alaska this past weekend. It exceeded my expectations. Dave and I got to see so much wildlife, drove all over Denali National Park, and took lots of pictures and made great memories. So be warned friends, there are a lot of pictures in this post and tomorrow’s. 🙂 Hope you enjoy them.

Thursday August 20th, 2015

Right from work I drove to LAX, parked the car and headed to my flight with Delta. I had a layover in our future home of Seattle for an hour, ate a quick salad then was off to Fairbanks.

I got in late at 11pm and Dave picked me up at the airport in Fairbanks which was small and super easy to navigate.

Friday

Dave and his film crew are staying at the Springhill Suites in Fairbanks.

In the morning I got to see the town a little on the way to the airport to grab our car rental. We also stopped by Starbucks and Fred Meyer (their grocery store) to get a few things for our time in Denali and our mini 2 hour road trip there. We got bananas and nectarines. I also brought dried apricots, Goldfish crackers, dried bananas, coconut almonds, and mixed nuts. Side note I love snacking on road trips.

We got to our motel which was cute and $150 a night.

The receptionist suggested we go to the cafe next door called Rose’s. It was simple diner type food but had such a great outdoor patio.

Right before we went into the park, we stopped by the coffee house and grabbed some drinks. We love going to local coffee shops on our road trips.

Here we are at the entrance of the park. Throughout the day it was sunny, cloudy and rainy. It was about 45 degrees out.

 

There were sweeping views of the mountains and it was really cool to see sheets of rain in the distance.

Here is a fun pic I took from our car window.

This was at Mountain Vista at mile 15, near where private vehicles are restricted and you need a permit to go in your own private car, or you can go in the park buses. Because Dave is currently working with Animal Planet, we were able to snag a permit so we could lug all our camera gear in the car.

 

We decided it would make the most sense to drive through the park since it’s 6 million acres! We wanted to cover the most ground and have increase our likelihood of seeing wildlife. We also had a lot of camera gear that we wouldn’t have been able to hike with.

We stopped at Sanctuary River and did our traditional jumping photo 🙂 And in case you were wondering, Dave is holding a can of bear mace just in case.

The road that goes through the park is 90 miles and around mile 30 we turned around and headed back out and headed to dinner.

And of course on the way out we finally spotted a moose!

We went out to dinner and had delicious oysters as an appetizer, and there was such a nice view from the restaurant. We went to eat at Overlook which is part of the Crow’s Nest Cabins.

It was also cool to see how light it still was at almost 10pm.

The first two days in Alaska were awesome. We had so much fun and it was surreal to be in Alaska together, especially in Denali National Park! Tomorrow I’ll go over Saturday and Sunday of our trip. Get ready there’s a lot more pictures 🙂

Linking up today with Bonnie Rose blog and Sweet Little Ones:

 

 

 

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