Duck Farts & Saddle Sores

There was no shortage of entertainment on the Alaska Twitter trip sponsored by Princess Cruises.  After returning from an incredible helicopter ride and glacier landing, we attended a fun filled dinner theatre.  The same wait staff who served our BBQ, were
the cast members in the musical, “The Music of Denali”. 

Somehow the cast coaxed me up on stage - thankfully for the audience they didn’t ask me to sing anything. I just had to sit there and look good:)

 After the show, the entourage of twitteratti walked across the street and was treated to a round of Duck Farts an Alaskan favorite consisting of Crown Royal, Kalula, and Baileys Irish Creme.






 We also learned the international sign for "I saw a moose today"

As we headed back to our rooms around 2 a.m., I snapped this picture of this signpost to kinda explain why Alaska is known as “the land of the midnight sun.” This was as about as dark as it got.
.

The next morning we took about a three hour bus from the Denali Princess Lodge to the McKinley Princess Lodge.  where we saddled up and road through the trails taking in the beautiful Alaskan landscape.

  

I didn’t actually get saddle sores from the adventure, but I did walk like a bow-legged cowboy for the next two days. If you take a horseback excursion and you're over 40, I highly recommend that you stretch before mounting up.

Destination Denali

Day two of the Twitter trip sponsored by Princess Cruises began with a train ride from Fairbanks to Denali. After a wonderful breakfast aboard the train, we adjourned upstairs in the glass covered rail car where we took in the breathtaking scenery. The reindeer sausage and salmon breakfast burrito were yummy!

Our tour guides were incredibly knowledgeable of Alaskan history and geography. They always seemed to know exactly where we were as they give us notice of various photo opportunities in advance.  These are just a fraction of the photos I took on the 4 hour trip that didn't nearly seem that long.

  We saw a HUGE beaver dam, lots of cool looking bridges, rafters on the river and of course snow capped mountains as we wound our way across miles of perma-frost tundra, mountains, hills and canyons.

The ever changing scenery, good food, informative guides and clean restrooms made this a terrific way to experience Alaska. I'm now adding a train rides across the USA and Europe to my Bucket List!