Alaska - On to Denali with a visit to the Denali National Park Visitor Center

After dinner last night in the lodge's restaurant, we packed our bags and set them outside with tags that said we wanted them to be with us at the lodge in Denali. We only packed one main suitcase each so we never bothered to use the "Meet me on the ship" luggage option. Make sure you set aside something to wear in the morning before you set your luggage out at night! So many stories of people having to head out the next day in bathrobes or less.

For the ride from Fairbanks to Denali, we traveled all together via motorcoach. It's the same type of motorcoach you'd use when taking a bus tour on a shore excursion. While we had some commentary from our guide during the ride, it's mostly just watching the scenery go by. Definitely set aside something for your own (and your kids) entertainment during these transfers.

The Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge is like a resort taking up essentially several blocks on one side of the street. Be prepared for a walk to go from your hotel rooms to the main buildings. There are restaurants on site as well as communal lounges both in the main building and in the new interior room buildings known as Building A and Building B. You can really see the difference between what Princess offers and the other cruise lines offer on Alaska land tours. As we walked the property today, we saw a bus from Royal Caribbean Cruises shuttling their passengers from some hotel outside of town into a restaurant across the street.

Today was mostly consumed by the travel between lodges. Our guide announced that while most of the lodge has motel style rooms with doors open to the outside, being on the Connoisseur tour got us rooms in the new supposedly nicer interior buildings. Our group was split between Building A and Building B with a nice courtyard in between. One of the nice touches each tour group gets is to pose for a group photo in this courtyard and then we each got a copy of the photo. Another nice perk is the extra service. While we chatted with our guide this afternoon, another couple called her to report that their luggage zipper had been damaged in transit. She immediately called for someone from the lodge to retrieve the suitcase to try and repair and to deliver a duffel bag to use in the meantime.

After we checked into our rooms and had our luggage delivered right away (much quicker when you're only unloading a single bus and not a whole ship's worth of luggage), we opted to take advantage of the lodge's free shuttle to visit the Denali National Park's Visitor Center. I had booked (at an extra cost and only for myself) an evening excursion but group tour activities wouldn't start until tomorrow, our first full day in Denali.

Already spotted signs of wildlife:

The inside of the visitor center was a small museum featuring crafted displays of what local wild animals looked like and information about them. It is a self guided tour with the option of seeing a 20 minute movie shown throughout the day on the hour and half hour. The visitor center hours are from 8AM to 6PM. Here you can seek out a ranger led walk or talk and of course visit the gift shop.

Several of the animal recreations were large and very realistic looking.

There was also a display showcasing what a homestead was like in the Kantishna gold mining camp:

That's a video screen mounted inside the upright trunk in the display. Wouldn't be for a century or more that luggage came with electronic capabilities.

If you have children traveling with you, Denali is one of the many US National Parks and features a Junior Ranger program. We passed a few families doing educational activities on the grounds like matching animal prints and creating rubbings.

Time to venture outside and walk along some of the trails:

The roads and walkways were all paved so easy maneuvering for walkers, wheelchairs, scooters, and strollers.