Back in Kotzebue, we are taken to the local office of the National Park Service where a ranger gives us a short talk, followed by a ten-minute film regarding the vast area (almost 9-million acres) managed by the park service in this part of Alaska. Our next destination is the Museum of the Arctic, a substantial building that includes exhibits relating to the animals and birds that inhabit the area. There is a slide show regarding local customs, an exhibition of traditional Eskimo singing and dancing, and a demonstration of blanket tossing.

Our flight back to Anchorage is via Nome, where the Boeing 737-400 manages to land - apparently this has been impossible recently due to poor weather. We stay on the aircraft in the knowledge that we have reached the most westerly point of our travels - in fact, there is not much opportunity for going further west, Nome is just 123-miles east of the International Date Line. It is almost 10pm when we land at Anchorage and get the shuttle bus back to our hotel.

Today we drive just over 250-miles from Anchorage to Denali State Park, where we will spend two nights in the park's hotel (right). The first part of the drive is through dense woodland, the second has more open aspects. As we proceed north, the weather deteriorates with rain and poor visibility. Mount McKinley is obscured by cloud when we stop at Denali Viewpoint South to eat muffins.

We reach Denali State Park at about 2pm - the temperature is 53F, similar to that we experienced above the Arctic Circle. Heavy rain continues for much of the afternoon and evening as, apparently, it has been doing for the previous thirty-eight days. Following dinner in the hotel, we sit in the lobby area as hordes of Japanese tourists wander about. At 8pm, we join a large audience in the auditorium where a ranger gives a talk on bear safety, and then commentates to a slide show regarding early pioneer climbers of Mount McKinley. An early night is dictated by the need to get up tomorrow at 4:30am for the Tundra Wildlife Tour.

Our tour bus is one of many that will make the journey into Denali this morning. The bus is very basic and the driver irritatingly speaks at some length about his Irish ancestry. However, a good packed lunch is provided and hot drinks are dispensed into souvenir mugs when we reach the Toklat River - a distance of fifty-three miles that takes us about 3½-hours to reach. The first fifteen miles of this outward journey is on a paved road, the remainder on a dirt track. Frequent stops are made on the outward journey for wildlife sightings that include caribou, snowshoe hare, moose, Dall sheep, a golden eagle, and a grizzly bear. The bear is aged about three or four, and is sitting very close to the road; it sits quietly and continues to eat soapberries whilst the bus is stationary.

It is cold but dry during our wildlife tour, but heavy rain returns in the afternoon when we return to the lodge accommodation. As we have our evening meal in the hotel there is a hailstorm. Tonight's slide show deals with how animals communicate with each other.

 

Another early start in order to drive back to Anchorage in time for our 3:39pm flight to Seattle. It is very cold this morning as we pack the Blazer not long after dawn. More snow has fallen on the mountains overnight and we have a few snow flurries as we prepare to depart.

 

As we drive the 77-miles to Denali Viewpoint North, the clouds clear to reveal a perfect, clear blue sky. Stunning views of the mountains are provided on our drive south, with the huge mass of Mount McKinley dominating the scene. In contrast to our drive north, we are able to take advantage of photo opportunities.

We reach Anchorage Airport at 1:30pm and return the Blazer having added 1,381-miles to its odometer. The flight on a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 is delayed until 4:22pm, but lands at Seattle 8:32pm. We spend the night at the familiar Comfort Inn.

The flights from Seattle to Birmingham via Chicago bring the number of flights made on this trip to 18 - a total of 39 hours, 40 minutes in the air, with a distance covered of over 16,000-miles. We land in Birmingham at 8:25am on Thursday, August 17th (Day 22).

Visiting Alaska has been an amazing experience - the 49th state was definitely a destination that had the right degree of unusualness to make it eminently suitable to commemorate the unique milestone of the Year 2000. Although Alaska has many of the conveniences and advantages associated with travelling and holidaying in America, these were experienced in a vast and wild landscape that made it a remarkably different holiday destination. In this remote part of the world we enjoyed some remarkable experiences that included very many highlights.

The scenic highlights were mainly viewed from cruise ships and small planes: the fjords, glaciers, icebergs, and mountains of Prince William Sound, Glacier Bay, and Kenai Fjords National Park; the stunning vistas on the short flight from Gustavus to Skagway; and the remote glaciers and snowfields of Mount McKinley only visible on our flightseeing trip.

 

The cruises also provided some of the wildlife highlights: the delightful sea otters and tufted puffins; diving humpback whales and rushing orcas; the magnificent bald eagles; the calm seals resting on ice floes. Plus on land: the salmon that crowded into Salmon Creek in Juneau, and provided a colourful display in Steep Creek at Mendenhall Glacier; also the antics of the bears fishing at Geographic Harbor, and a sow bear defending her cubs in Denali State Park.

 

Many of our experiences were unique in themselves: driving through a rail tunnel; feeling an earthquake; travelling above the Arctic Circle and close to the International Date Line; flying into remote coves in small floatplanes; rafting down a salmon river; listening to the sounds of a glacier, and feeling its coldness; approaching Mendenhall Glacier; walking to Byron Glacier; riding behind a team of huskies; seeing Mount McKinley without any clouds. We even found history in Alaska: in learning how the Eskimos survived there; how Captain Cook explored there; and how the Stampeders searched for gold there.

 

And then there were the highlights of those aspects of a holiday that are associated with more usual destinations: the weather (the clarity of light in Prince William Sound; the lovely evenings in Bartlett Cove; the atmospheric light and temperature of Tracy Arm); the hotels (the individualistic Grandma's Feather Bed); the food (from the expensive at Ray's Waterfront Dining, via the delicious halibut and salmon on the cruises, to the free salmon picnic in Skagway); and the shopping for souvenirs in Skagway.