Alaska – McKinley Chalet Resort

After a great train ride from Anchorage, we are just outside the park at the McKinley Chalet Resort.  This resort is also owned by Holland America.

The resort is set along the Nenana River which we could hear from our room.

We did hit the peak fall colors with the yellow aspens and birch.

We found this bear track along the river.  We decided to keep to the more travelled path.

This huge rock was along the river.

There were lots of clouds on the mountains.  We hoped they could clear before our bus trip into the park the next day.

Here is one of the original tour busses that went into the park.

This is a 1924 Fageol Safety Coach build in Oakland, CA, and brought to Alaska in 1928.  It could carry 22 passengers and replaced a stage coach that took tourists from the railway station into a camp in the park.

The resort has a few restaurants and some touristy shops.  This group was getting their Alaskan pioneer photos taken.  They also have an “artist in residence”, a woodworker I enjoyed visiting.  He had a number of handmade items for sale and had a lathe set up to make some smaller items.  He offered to teach me to do a small lathe project, but since I’d just had a glass of wine I decided to pass on what would have been a great souvenir in the interest of safety.

All the room are in log structures, each with 12 units.  With the window open in the back we could hear the Nenana River.

We can now see the tops of the mountains behind our cabins.

Here are some of the flowering plants in front of our cabin. 

Tomorrow we get on a bus for a 5 1/2 hour trip into Denali.

Mark