Sunny days in Alaska!

Alaska seems like a distant dream/adventure/memory!

The day before it began,

our little love turned 3 - she is getting so big.

We celebrated with a wee cake and ice-cream party at one of her favourite

parks in Stratford.

So glad our travel plans allowed this celebration ...

Noa, you are the sweetest little thing,

you delight us in so many ways,

with your tender heart, your joyfulness,

your sincere warm hugs and cuddles,

your sunny disposition, and gentle spirit.

So blessed to be your Nammie!

Oh how I missed you ... while we were gone!

It seemed like sunny days were waiting for us in the far North!

A well organized and escorted Princess Cruises land tour,

began in Fairbanks and took us to Denali National Park,

and then to Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge near Talkeetna.

So many WOW moments on this 7 day land tour!

Narrated train ride carried us to Gold Dredge 8

We panned for gold and actually got some (as did everyone else too). It was exciting none-the-less.

An up close and personal look 

at the Alaskan Pipeline.

Very informative and interesting presentation!

Following a delicious beef stew "miner's" lunch we boarded an

authentic sternwheeler for a narrated cruise along the Chena and Tanana rivers.

We were a floating audience to the home of the late Susan Butcher,

a four-time Iditarod champion, whose husband Dave Monson gave

a dog mushing demonstration - wonderful!
Her legacy lives on in a beautiful children's book about her now famous "runt of the litter" Granite.

The puppies were adorable and the excited dogs ran their hearts out.

They absolutely love this sport and are born to run!

The sternwheeler cruised us to the old Chena Indian Village where we

disembarked for a tour of this Athabascan village museum.

Native guides gave us a glimpse into local life and history.

I was enchanted by this tour ...

The beauty of this young native interpreter dressed in the fur, took my breath away!

The next sunny day 

(why did we bring so much warm clothing?)

we travelled by coach to the beautiful 

Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge - the perfect base camp

for exploring Denali National Park!

The evening dinner theatre meal and performance "Music of Denali"

gave us a delightful depiction of legendary adventures of the first men

to scale North America's highest peak, The Great One!

It was after the show that we climbed into a waiting van to take us and

our dear friends, Stew and Karen on a midnight sun tundra golfing adventure.

The sun just kept shining ...

So bizarre to be on the golf course

so late in the evening (8:30 - 10:30ish).

The scenery was beautiful.
Thanks Stew and Karen for encouraging us
to do this!

Sunny faces under the midnight sun!
I learned this selfie technique from my blog friend Lovella! She does it better than I do.

Fireweed was everywhere - we learned that once the buds at the top of the flower open
winter is very close behind!

Thankfully there were "black out" drapes on our lodge windows,

giving us a refreshing sleep in preparation for the next fantastic,

and yet again, sunny day!!!

High hopes were that Denali - The Great One - would be out today.

The five-six hour tour through the park in a school bus

was well worth it ....

Here's why:

Apparently only about 5% of visitors get to see this magnificent view.
Denali (formerly named Mt. McKinley) just doesn't "come out" every day.
It creates it's own weather and is usually shrouded in a thick cloud cover. We felt so lucky!

This National Park is stunning.
It is 6 MILLION Acres of wilderness!
We experienced a small piece of this unspoiled treasure.

We saw moose (with two calves), Grizzly bears basking in the sun,

Caribou (hot and uncomfortable from the heat and bugs),

a Golden Eagle, Willow Ptarmigan (the state bird), but not the elusive

Dall Sheep (teeny white specks high in the hills may have been some?).

From Denali we travelled to Mt. McKinley Lodge.

We enjoyed an afternoon of gliding in tandem kayaks on Byers Lake.

My favourite shot of our travel mates on this tranquil and scenic lake.

Now it was All Aboard on the "Direct-to-the-Wilderness" Glass top Rail

for the journey to Whittier - where our ship awaited!

This was the first and only day we saw rain - can you believe it?

I finally got to wear my new rain coat and a warm sweater ...

We boarded the beautiful Coral Princess and were joined there by another couple of our friends,

Ralph and Yvonne.
We could finally unpack in our state room and be rejoined with the suitcase
that needed to be sent ahead (the one where we should have kept
back some summery clothing - lol).

Stay tuned for the cruise portion of this adventure ... where the sun continued to shine.

In the meantime, we received some sunny pictures from home ... to keep us from getting too homesick.

Till next time ...... enjoy these last few shorter August days.