Julie was keeping the journal day-to-day, so it's told from her perspective. Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the gallery.
We had to get up early since our train (the Denali Star) was at 8:15am. A very friendly cabbie from Minneapolis picked us up and took us to the train depot. We checked in, then waited for the departure. Julie visited their model railroad of the towns we would pass through. One of the cars (ours) had an electrical problem, so we were switched to a different car. The seats were next to the observation deck, so it was easy to see out the observation windows. The train went through pretty hillsides, crossed rivers, and through a gorge. The hotel shuttle met us at the train station in Denali National Park and Preserve.
The Denali Park Salmon Bake and Cabins was not quite what we envisioned — our cabin was up a short but steep hill, cold, and with no soap or shampoo. In other words, it had character. But, at least it was half the price of the other places.
We got a late lunch of sandwiches at the restaurant, then walked to the visitors center. We thought it would be 20 minutes, but was 40 minutes to the transportation center then another 20 to the visitors center. We checked in for our next day bus tour, although the people at the counter couldn't tell us how to meet the bus. Mark called the 800 number and arranged to get picked up at a neighboring hotel. We enjoyed the visitors center including a movie about early days of visiting Denali (although Ken fell asleep). We ended up walking about 6 miles that afternoon, including back to the hotel. We saw a moose while walking along the road.
On the way back, we bought food for breakfast and some lunch food for Ken, since our bus tour was not going to have gluten-free food. We went back to the hotel for dinner. Dinner was disappointing compared to lunch, although Julie had a great Dark & Dry cider, and dessert was good. After dinner, we wandered around the tourist shops & bought a few things.
Our room was COLD when we go back. We turned on the heat but it didn't help much, so we slept in our long underwear. Fortunately, Mark & Marilyn's room was warmer than ours.
In the evening after getting back to the hotel, Ken had a good enough cell signal to notice a voicemail from Ryan, one of the HR people at Target. He sent back a quick email, arranging to call Ryan on Wednesday morning at 6:00am (which was 9:00am back in Minneapolis).
It was another early morning — the alarm went off at 5:45am. Our plan for the day was to do the all-day Kantishna Experience bus tour.
Ken got up first and was ready to call Ryan at 6:00am. What Ryan had to say was not quite what Ken had been hoping to hear. Only one of the three teams he had interviewed with was interested in extending an offer, and that offer was for a Senior Engineer position rather than the Lead Engineer position he had anticipated. This was not really the way Ken had wanted to start his day. He spent a fair amount of time during the first few hours of the bus tour collecting his thoughts and composing emails to friends for advice. (He didn't have phone service on the bus, but it was still possible to write the emails.) The early-morning call put sort of a damper on the whole day for Ken.
It was quite chilly when we walked to the bus pickup across the street at the Princess cruise resort — in the high 30s. It later warmed into a beautiful day before raining off & on during the afternoon.
We were one of the 30% of visitors that gets to see Denali. We eventually saw it all 3 days we were within range of the mountain. We got to see the taiga & tundra biomes, and lots of animals including moose (moms & babies), a herd of 100+ caribou, and multiple grizzlies, including one who wandered down the road in front of the bus for a while.
I enjoyed watching a couple Arctic ground squirrels run around the Eilsen Visitor Center area, and one of them ran past me about a foot away. Ken got to see a Super Cub plane get warmed up to take off at the Kantishna airstrip, a former mining community now within the park. We got on the bus about 7am and got back about 8:30pm, a long day. We got good seats on the bus although we were one of the last people on. The park website described the buses as "upgraded motorcoach" and showed a coach bus picture, but it was really a school bus with working heaters and coach bus seats. Oh well.
Denali National Park and Preserve is strange because it's really big, but there is very little development in the park — unlike many national parks. To go a substantial way into the park means multi-hour bus rides, even for a day trip. A big downside of a tour is always having to wait for the bathroom. We'd get a 10-15 minute stop every 90 minutes, and I spent most of these waiting for the bathroom. Mark took lots of good pictures with his camera of all the animals. I thought I saw sheep high in the mountains, but without binoculars I couldn't distinguish them from white rocks.
We then had dinner at the hotel again, and this time got sandwiches, which were much better than the previous nights' dinner. Ken, Mark, and I all got the cider from yesterday. Several workers at the hotel recognized our last name and wondered what it was — they were Serbian.
After dinner, we went for a long walk and talked over Ken's thoughts about the phone call with Ryan and what he should do for next steps. Although Ken was disappointed in the offer, we decided that it was good enough that he should continue to follow up. Before going to bed, he sent Ryan an email confirming that he was interested in Target's offer, and including some times for possible follow-on conversations with the hiring manager Brandon over the course of the next week.