Pick a Tree, Any Tree

Traveling by train is a relaxing experience...unless you are sitting with people who have a need to hear themselves talk. I mean, really, there is polite conversation, and then there's never coming up for air. Really. Really? REALLY?? John and Lucy are lovely and fascinating people, but they talk too much...waaaaaay too much. We spent four hours on a train sitting across from them. We ate breakfast on the train and thought maybe we might get a reprieve from the incessant rambling, but when one was chewing the other was talking.

Breakfast was good. Tim got blueberry flapjacks. I ordered a skillet scramble, and we shared them. Both came with reindeer sausage. As an aside, reindeer really do exist. They are cousins to the caribou. The meat is good. Back to John and Lucy...what I know about them is interesting, but it should have taken many short conversations over the course of a few months to uncover this information, not four hours all in one sitting. They are both eye doctors and hunters, really good ones if they are not braggarts. She is one of eleven children. (I even knew her birth order, but I've forgotten.) She grew up on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. (I may get some genuine raw sugar out of it.) Her father invented the sugar mill, but he wouldn't patent it. They have four children, all very successful. I could tell you more, but that's enough. He? He knows everything. That's all I'm going to say about that.

The ride was beautiful. The lowlands were flat and green—sometimes open meadows, sometimes stands of white-barked birch trees. As we climbed into the mountains, we saw new landscapes around every bend. We arrived at Denali Park Princess Wilderness Lodge right around noon. After settling in, we went to The Salmon Bake for lunch. Crab sliders and halibut fish and chips fit the bill. Both were tasty.

The Music of Denali dinner Theater was on tap for later in the evening, so on the suggestion of our good Irish tour guide Patrick, we headed to the Denali National Park Visitor's Center for a little look around. We watched a short film on Denali, then decided we had time for a brief walk before we went back to the lodge for the dinner and show. It was here we finally saw the elusive animal we had been searching for since we first started traveling back in 2007.

We've been to the Tetons, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast looking for this bad boy (or girl). We walked out behind the Visitor's Center and had a couple of trail choices. We didn't have enough time to really explore much but wanted to see if we could get a mile or two in. We'd gotten several safety tips and of course, read the signs—make noise. If you startle an animal, it is much more likely to be aggressive. If you encounter a bear, don't run. If you are charged by a moose...run! Patrick added that you should find a tree to “hide” behind because a moose isn't terribly agile and can't navigate around them. We walked about three quarters of a mile and checked our time. Having wandered around long enough, it was time to turn back. The entire way, we had to make an effort to make noise. Listening to people talk all day long had made us both crave a little peace and quiet. On the other hand, we wanted to stay safe. Often we just chanted, “Bear! Bear! Bear! Bear!” just like our nephew Brandon did when we was little as he marched around in a circle at my mom's house, wanting to do nothing more but alert the wildlife that we were coming. We rounded the last corner before we got to the top of the trail head. Tim was busy checking a setting on the camera when they stopped me cold. Standing half on the path, half in the woods, less than twenty yards away, stood a mama moose and her two calves. I don't know why people are worried about the wildlife being startled, it was Tim and I whose knees buckled! I stuttered, “Look, look, moose!” They. Were. Huge. The babies were as big as a large adult deer in Missouri. I quickly remembered the instructions as I backed away and almost ran into Tim, who was trying to get a closer look. I immediately started talking. Tim immediately started shushing me. I said, “I thought we were supposed to make noise!” He answered, “You're going to scare them away.” I wasn't so sure that was a bad idea. By this time we were both taking pictures, but my hands were not so steady. : ) I was a couple of steps behind Tim, so I just turned my camera off and watched as Tim snapped several awesome pictures. Two different groups came up the trail from behind us. One had been walking ten miles to find a moose, the other had left their cameras at the Lodge thinking they were just going to the Visitor Center. We were the lucky ones.

Mama and babies eventually wandered back into the woods, and we made our way back to the shuttle bus to the lodge. We had just had an unbelievably close-encounter with moose! We had bragging rights at dinner. Awesome.

The dinner theater was cheesy. I mean like triple cheese with a side order of cheese cheesy. The food—average. But that's okay. We saw moose!