ATVs and Jet Boats and Jeeps, Oh My

We wanted to spend as much time taking in the beautiful Denali Park scenery as we could — so we signed up for all manner of tours. The night we arrived, we quickly checked into our room and then took off on the Jet Boat Safari that included a presentation on the wilderness lifestyle (many citizens of Alaska still pretty much live off the land — and apparently they can bear meat to preserve for winter meals, who knew?) followed by the wildest boat ride ever.

Of course, what trip to Alaska is complete without a little panning for gold? If you look closely, you will see a tiny fleck of gold at the top of the pan.

Feeding the reindeer (I guess if they are farm raised, they are reindeer — if they are wild, then they are caribou). Could be Dasher and Dancer, or was it Prancer and Vixen? No Rudolph, though.

A speedy ride down the Nenana River. And I do mean speedy. I was expecting a sedate little float, but thoroughly enjoyed the ride anyway.

Here you can see the division between glacial water (the murky-looking stuff) and snow melt.

A beaver working on a dam.

And, of course, the tour guide.

Early the next morning, we hoped in a side-by-side and went off-roading (in a nice orderly fashion with the rest of the tour, of course) through a local canyon and dry creek bed. Theo let me drive so he could take pictures and I am pretty sure he might regret that decision. My inner wild woman escaped that day and I just had to let the crazy run! At least I passed the driving test…

Here’s the first actual moose sighting of our trip. Thank goodness for zoom lenses!

Dry creek bed.

And last, but not least, our long-suffering guides. I suspect our group may have driven them to consume large quantities of adult beverages by the time it was over.

After our ATV adventure, we crammed ourselves into a specially-outfitted school bus for the trek into Denali National Park. But more on that in a later post.

The morning of our last full day in Denali, we dragged our tired selves out of bed for an early morning Jeep adventure. After all the fun we had on the ATV ride, I was kinda hoping we would go off road, but alas, this tour stayed on the paved Denali Highway. We made plenty of photo stops and like everywhere we went, the scenery is fabulous.