Alaska Day 1: Denali

Hey guys,

Let me start by saying a flat fact. My short trip to Alaska was probably the most breathtaking of all the trips I have taken so far. And I would like to thank every single contributing factor which made it possible and so very much memorable. Starting from the availability of affordable flight tickets to the successful production roll out of the phase 2 of my project just few days back (work stuff!) ... from the more than perfect weather we had throughout to the fact that I had people with me to plan out the most suitable itinerary.

The group was back - Asish da, Sukanya di, Soumen, Moumita and me (The same Yellowstone team). On the due date (Aug 31, 1 am local time) we reached Anchorage via Minneapolis (1 hr in air after leaving which the captain informed us that there is an aurora visible to the left of the flight. I am not sure what exactly was it but that night I did see a yellow something in the sky - true story!). Anchorage airport was the place where we had to freshen up, change, eat and get some supplies for our day to come. There was no possibility of sleep for us in the next 26 hours.

Once outside the 40 mile radius of the city of Anchorage, it was only and only one single lane road to the Denali National Park (Soumen and Asish da exchanged seats at a gas station mid way). We reached the visitors' center of the park at about 730 in the morning after a 5 hours drive to cover about 300 miles of road in high beam. We waited and then we started with the guided tour bus at 830. One thing was there about our whole Alaska trip - there was very less driving in comparison to what I had experienced so far.

Like we were told earlier, there was no food item for purchase (or pluck) for the next 12 hours once we were inside the park. And shortly we were inside the park, it started to snow. The fall season in Alaska lasts only for two weeks. Luckily, we were in the middle of it. It was a total treat to be able to see it snowing on the vast red and yellow carpet. Basically it was like a combination of three seasons - summer (as it was back in Lexington, and in most of the world's calendars), the fall (as it was in Alaska, technically) and the winter (as was Alaska always!).

A little deeper into the park, we witness the vast open wilderness. The human kind has settled everywhere on this planet, but beyond certain latitudes, it could not find it in itself to tame the inhospitable beauty of the land. All he could do here is set his foot onto the land and start walking. On our journey, the bus picked up quite a few number of hikers, who were inside the park, with a backpack, a stick and a camera walking or biking on the trails and experiencing the wilderness first hand.

My personal favorite of the day was the Eielson Point (yes, this one) which was like complete textbook Alaska for me - straight out of the picture in my mind (or rather some book called "Ideal Alaska" in my mind) into the picture in my camera.

This was one of those places in the park, where you ask yourself - is it really real? You stand there for so many passing moments with your eyes blinking less frequently, mouth closed, slow breathing and with your hands inside the jacket's pockets... And you just stand there, savoring every ray of light coming from what is in front of you. You touch the cold metal railing, just to check if it is... really real. The sun was not  in an enlightened mood that day. But however that big ball of fire wanted us to witness the sight, it appeared just perfect. And in a way, it was good we could not see Mt. McKinley, there is only a limit to which I could have taken that day.

Further down west of the park was the Wonder Lake, but I had seen what I had to see. While coming back from the Wonder Lake, I was feeling like that student who has already scored the passing mark and who is now only going for some higher numbers, just for the hell of it. With my nose pressed against the bus window now, the loneliness of the place became only clearer and clearer.

Every place on earth does not make you realize the planet-ness of it. Yes, it is a planet, at just the perfect distance from that insanely bright and hot thing. And this distance is why things are more colorful here. Within a second you zoom out higher and higher - a piece of land, a huge land mass, a continent, oceans surrounding the continent, and Zzoop! A planet! With this picture in mind, you take a look at the piece of land again, and you realize that what you are looking at is a planet, the most colourful of all.

On our journey back to the visitor's center, we could spot some caribou but after seeing the image which one of the hikers/photographers in the bus clicked, I am literally ashamed to put up that image which I clicked. But anyway, our journey inside the park ended sharp at 830 in the evening. By now, we were hungry like sharks. Ion had suggested us to try out the McKinley Creekside Cafe, just a couple of miles outside the park. I must say, the cafe was a little rough around the edges, yet had that warm welcome air to it. A lovely place to sit back at the end of day. And to top everything else, it made me fall in love with the fish called Halibut. I had one whole plate of the entree to myself.

But romanticizing the place anymore had to stop. Once done with our food and all settled inside that SUV, we started again. The GPS showed us that we would reach not before 2 am the next day. And so it was. After waking up on Friday 7am, I was about to go to sleep at 230 on Sunday. But that's not all. We had a train to catch at 630 the next morning (o ya!). The sleep was so insufficient that I overlooked a whole wash basin present in my hotel room and ended up brushing my teeth standing in the bathtub the next morning.

Yellowstone Day 2: Falls

The best part of going out with equally crazy people is that everybody does their best to stick to the plan. Nobody shows the attitude of "being only 5 minutes late". The sunrise in town of West Yellowstone was certainly not that colorful as its sunset, but was definitely had an air of rise-and-shine-dear-travelers.

After a heavy breakfast at a log house McDonalds, we started off for further north. The day previous was from south to north, via west (and then rest at west). Today, we had the north, the east and then finally the south and then exit from the park. The first stop was the grand Mammoth Spring. A huge heap of dazzling limestone with smoking hot water cleansing it everywhere. This is one of those places where you actually feel the need of wearing a protective sun-glass. The disturbingly white reflection at that time of day only made me think how it must be to look at this on a full moon cloudless night... only heavens know.

As the day progressed, we got habituated with the openness of the place. Other than the pitch road and a few sign-boards on its sides, nothing else artificial was to be seen for long distances. The effort is not just for the preservation of the natural beauty, but also the preservation of the natural habitat of the native animals.


The list of things-to-see went on and we were finally on the surprisingly small two tiered wooden platform to see the Tower Falls. The first tier was not offering a good view (not sure, if it was due to my own height!), but the second (the higher one) was just perfect. A waterfall in the middle of all the green. It was barely visible where the fallen water was landing. As a matter of fact, Yellowstone National Park is still not completely known. The rangers still survey the land (sometimes from the sky) to look for anything which is still unknown - a hill, a waterfall, a hot geyser, anything. I guess, this possibility of the unknown has kept mother nature fascinating and full of wonders since the beginning of mankind! Its difficult to imagine what the human will do when it will assume to have known everything about nature.


I was expecting to run into that smell from the last day somewhere or the other, but there was not a hot geyser anywhere to be seen. Instead, it was cold in the extreme north of the hoop called Yellowstone Highway. And it seemed very thoughtful of the management to have built pullover points at those perfect bends and altitudes of the hilly road (cannot appreciate enough how skillfully our vehicle was driven on these roads). At places like these you somehow evaluate your existence, or may be the cause of it. You know you will drive away from this place in next 11 minutes, but for every second you remain there standing, you ask what is more worth of collecting in this life - paper and metal or some pure air in your memory.

The next point was the one to which I personally was looking forward the most. The Artists' Point. Undoubtedly, it looks like some serious painting effort by the creator. A picture perfect waterfall in the heart of grand welcoming arms of  the canyon walls.

Standing there and looking directly at the eye of the fall gives you a feeling that it is looking back at you (although, it looks more like the stuck out tongue of Rolling Stones, but still...). And the moment you realize that the most beautiful thing present there is looking at you, it is needless to explain that overwhelming feeling of joy. And this place is not called Artists' Point for without a reason. Artists literally come to this place and paint their version of this fall.

There were more places where the group stopped just for the sake of getting out of the car and standing, there were many more pictures taken of the depth of the canyon, and also of the sharp bends of roads cutting through snowy forest grounds, but I probably wont be able to fill up the spaces around those pictures (not enough adjectives in my vocab), but one thing I can say - by the late afternoon that day, all five of us were not at all tired, but were neck-deep cheerful to have seen what we had seen in last two days. We now knew how we wanted our future trips to be like.

We came out of the park gates when the sun was still there and started to drive back to the Salt Lake City airport. We could not have thanked the sky enough to have remained cheerful throughout the weekend and occasionally putting on fashionable clouds with magnificent colors and shapes. We stopped at the town of Idaho Falls, had a really nice dinner at a local Olive Garden as mark of the accomplishment of our Yellowstone mission and finally at the airport, we got ourselves framed in a single shot: shoe-less, exhausted, sitting spread legs on the floor ...but gloriously cheerful!!

Huhh!! Till next time,
Cheers!