Denali

That Saturday we took the shuttle to the train station and checked our bags to our hotel (the Denali Princess Lodge.) The train was the same as before. When we got to the station the shuttle to the Lodge was nowhere near the train as the other hotels were. Also the bus was wheelchair accessible, but the driver didn’t tell us that (we found out after we got on.) We were the only ones on the shuttle and the whole ride to the Lodge the driver kept talking to us. I found out later he was giving us wrong information. We checked-in and had to walk outside to our building only to find that they had given us a room on the second floor that had no ramp and 50 stairs. Also the trolley shuttle around the Lodge was not accessible. I went back to the main Lodge and had the same woman who checked us in. I asked her how she expected us to go up stairs with the chair. They had us wait while they found us another room. This time the room was on the bottom floor with a ramp.

After checking-in I also went to the hotel Tour Desk and asked them about where to get the bus tour the next day – since the shuttle driver had told us we had to go a distance from the hotel. It turns out that after the hotel woman called around we finally got the right answer, but were told that the bus tour would not take our chair (as we had been told in writing from them that they would.)I called the bus company to find out about the chair since it was going to be a 13 hour tour. The woman at the tour company was pretty stupid and so I called our company (Alaska Tour and Travel) and had them deal with it even though they wanted me to – I just kept telling them that we had paid them to do all this and so they needed to get it done. We were basically told we wouldn’t know for sure if we could go on the tour until the next day if the chair fit. That is not what you want to hear when you are on vacation. Despite all this bad service in the first hour of arriving at the Lodge we bought tickets to a Dinner Musical Show. The show was ok. They served some kind of fish and ribs for dinner and the show was about the history of climbing the mountains around Denali – with people who had been on Broadway - we kept being told.

The Denali Princess Lodge is owned and operated by the Princess Cruise Line and was such a disappointment. Not only were the staff (as I already mentioned)poor, but also the food – we had lunch at the restaurant – and there were bedbugs in our room. I would not stay there ever again. Even people on tours with us that were with Princess/Holland America said they didn’t like the service or food.

On Sunday we ate breakfast and waited for the bus to come. The bus (Kantishna Tours) came and the guide (who like most people we met in Alaska were ex -hippies from outside the state) had me push the chair into a tight spot in the back of the bus – it just barely made it. So we got to go on the tour. The tour itself was pretty interesting. It was 13 hours long and you had to take the buses as no personal cars are allowed and we saw all sorts of animals (a bear, caribou, sheep, moose, etc.) The one annoying thing at the beginning of the tour into Denali State Park were the 3 doctors from California who kept shouting that they saw animals and they turned out to be rocks - they did that for hours. We made a few rest-stops along the way (the bathrooms there were really clean and nice even though they were outhouses.) At one of the stops we were given drinks, cookies and fruit. We stopped for lunch at the Kantisha Roadhouse which was a remote hotel inside the State Park. The 3 doctors sat at our table and kept trying to flirt with one of the waitresses even though they were in their 60s and she was in her 20s. She told them that she was Russian and I asked her something in Russian and she answered me in English – I don’t think she was really Russian (also her name tag said "Mariane" which isn't a Russian name. After lunch (which was a turkey wrap) we watched a dog sled demonstration. Luckily, the 3 doctors and several other people stayed at the hotel or took a plane back rather than the bus tour. On the way back out of the park the annoying doctors were replaced by a drunk Polish woman who was flirting with a French guy she just met (and everything she saw was an animal even if it wasn’t.) The tour was fun, but we were glad when it was over since it was so long and bumpy. When we got back to the Lodge I walked across the street and got some food at Subway – they don’t have $5 foot longs, but $10 ones.)