Alaska 2021 trip report - in a COVID world, for the less adventurous

[Eastridge]

@Mathmagicland, thanks for the trip report and especially for the detailed descriptions of how ABD has modified this trip due to COVID. That is very helpful.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Alaska day 7 - Wild for Wildlife
Girdwood

Itinerary -
-Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center visit
-Private Reindeer Wildlife presentation
-Lunch & afternoon on own in Girdwood,
-Farewell dinner at hotel

Itinerary changes -
-none planned or announced prior to departure

Our day -

Today we have our “guaranteed wildlife sightings” with a visit to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC). On the drive over, we saw several bald eagles in the mud flats along the coast….so majestic & beautiful. Our guides are ready for the day with thematic headwear.



The AWCC is not a zoo. They take in injured animals and have a conservation program. You can either drive through or walk through, and the animals have very large, all natural enclosures. We started with a drive through (in the bus!) to get an overview orientation, then exited the busses for a walking tour of some of the areas with the bears. It was drizzling a bit this morning so a few of us had our umbrellas out. Many of the bears were quite active and fun to watch.







We walked over to the reindeer area. From the name of this part of the visit, a Private Reindeer presentation, I expected something similar to our experience at the kennel, where we’d sit around and learn a bit more about them. Instead, it was a private photo op where we were led in the pen with a reindeer being held by one of the caretakers, while the AbD guide quickly snapped a couple of photos of each group. We had to keep our masks on because the reindeer are susceptible to Covid. As each group photo was taken, we were then free to wander the facility on our own for about an hour.

The AWCC has moose, fox, musk ox, porcupines, deer, coyote, fox, along with some birds and the various types of bears. By now the drizzle had stopped which was nice. We really enjoyed watching one black bear, Kobuk, who seemed to realize he had an audience and was really hamming it up for us for a long time.











We then headed back to the hotel. We were on our own for lunch and the afternoon, before our farewell dinner. The town of Girdwood provides a shuttle around town, making a few stops one of which was our hotel. They ask for a $1 per person donation to help cover the cost. My sister & I took the shuttle to one of the stops that had a soup & sandwich place called The Bake Shop, where they made all of their own bread along with soups and various baked goods. We could tell it was a good choice for lunch when there was a line of locals out there door.

All the dog owners might appreciate this great sign we saw while walking around Girdwood.



After lunch & a visit to a nearby gallery, we hopped back on the shuttle to go to the group of shops down by the highway. We’d passed The Tourist Trap gift shop on each of our bus rides to adventure activities, so we’re curious to check it out. Despite the name, it had some nicer items along with the usual tourist things. My sister picked up a bracelet. Afterwards, we had some ice cream while waiting for the shuttle to come round again & take us back to the hotel.

It had been threatening rain most of the afternoon, so we did not want to stay out long. I’m glad we didn’t, as shortly after we got back to the room it started raining a bit harder. The guides had suggested this afternoon as a good time to take the tram up the hill. I hope all who wanted to take the tram had already done so, as it shut down when the rain started. We took the rest of the afternoon to get all packed up & ready to go to the airport the next morning. We had a 9:30a.m. flight & were about an hour’s drive from the airport, so we knew we’d have an early pickup.

Time for our farewell dinner, and what a difference a day makes! Tonight there were only four larger tables set up; we could sit where we wanted and had two or three travel pods per table. In addition, we had a buffet & were able to serve ourselves. This meal felt the most like the usual AbD dinner experiences. I’d asked the guides about the changes, and they shared the dining protocols had been relaxed a bit by Disney. Again we have changes to a bit less restrictive as they are possible.

After dinner, we had a surprise performance by some dancers from the Alaska Native Heritage Center. They did several dances for us, explaining each one. They then had a little Q&A where we could ask them a few questions. One of the dancers was a little girl, she looked to be about three years old. Her dad was the drummer & mom was one of the dancers; he explained it was her first public performance. They do not force the kids; she wanted to participate in the dance that evening. She did pretty well at following along with the adults! Unfortunately I was not sitting in a place to get a good photo.

It was now time for our Final Jeopardy question. I’m not sharing it, in the event it’s used on other tours this summer. But, I can say it was a multi-part question and neither team got all parts answered correctly. Each team had four correct answers, and with our team’s wager, our bus ended up the Alaska AbD Jeopardy champs for our tour!!

After Jeopardy, we had the photo contest winners announced & a short slide show with some of the pictures taken during our week. The guides then came around to each group for goodbyes and to give us our departure times for the next morning. There were three departures - 3:30 a.m. for those with early morning flights, 7:00 a.m. for those with mid-morning flights, and 11:30a.m. for those with afternoon flights or Anchorage hotel drop-offs for post-AbD stays. Another sign of relaxing protocols, the AbD guides gave us and others goodbye hugs. With the physical distancing, I wasn’t expecting that at all! None of us had masks on; the guides still had to wear masks indoors.

Next up - departure day, a post-AbD trip on our own to Fairbanks, and some final thoughts on the Adventure experiences.

 

[Mathmagicland]

@Mathmagicland, thanks for the trip report and especially for the detailed descriptions of how ABD has modified this trip due to COVID. That is very helpful.

I’m happy to share, and it has been an evolving process, with a few changes for the better as the week progressed.

 

[CaliforniaGirl09]

Really enjoyed the report and as previous poster said, it's great to see in "real time" how changes to the itinerary are being made (both before and during the trip). I'll be interested to hear your summary. It sounds as if you've had a good time under the circumstances, but given the changes, I think as someone reading it from the outside that I would wait to do the trip until things get back to normal. I would have been bummed about some of the changes/substitutions. I guess it would also depend on how anxious I was to go somewhere/do a trip. I get that, LOL! But anyway, anxious to hear your level of enthusiasm and summary

 

[Mathmagicland]

Alaska day 8 - The Midnight Sun Sets
Girdwood, end of AbD

Itinerary -
- Transfers to Anchorage airport or the AbD Anchorage hotel

While the Midnight Sun might be setting with the end of the trip for most folks on our adventure, this was not the case for us. We were heading up to Fairbanks, truly the Land of the Midnight Sun, for a couple of days at the end of the AbD. We opted for a morning flight rather than drive due to time constraints with needing to be in Fairbanks by dinner time. (More on that later).

Because our morning hotel departure was at 7am with a luggage pickup at 6:30, and none of the hotel restaurants opened until 7, I’d picked up some breakfast rolls from the grab & go place when we returned to the hotel the afternoon before so we could have a little something before the bus ride. What I didn’t expect was for Disney to have breakfast boxes for us to have in the bus; these had Orange juice, a muffin, and an apple. (More protocols relaxing if we could eat a meal in the bus, but there were only six of us plus the driver so lots of separation.) Since we’d already eaten and could not take the juice through TSA, I gave our boxes to one of our other adventurers who was staying over a few days & on the bus to pick up a rental car at the airport. They could have them as snacks or save for breakfast the next day.

Our flight to Fairbanks was less than an hour, and the plane only about a third full, so we departed a bit early and landed early. I’d selected seats on the left side of the aisle, and we were treated to beautiful views Denali above the clouds, from 30,000 feet.





Fairbanks is the largest city in interior Alaska. Most of interior Alaska outside Fairbanks is very isolated cabins and remote villages. I’ve decided Fairbanks has the best airport art ever with their “this only works in Fairbanks” tile art on the entrances to the airport restrooms -





I knew I’d need a rental car in Fairbanks as, while there are things to see within walking distance of our hotel, we also planned to go out of town for some other sightseeing. I found rental cars are ordinarily more expensive in Alaska compared to other areas, even without the Covid factor being seen in many cities right now. My corporate code for Hertz (and OK to use for personal rentals) was a life-saver here - cars priced at $200-$250 per day were $30-$50 per day with my corporate code. Quite a difference!! I’m also glad I booked it early as there were no more cars available by five to six weeks ahead of our arrival.

Alaska has quite the robust summer baseball league for college students; many famous major league players have played it for a summer or two before they got drafted & signed their pro contracts. I’ve long wanted to see the annual Midnight Sun baseball game which is on the summer solstice June 21 each year in Fairbanks. (A Fairbanks men’s league kept the tradition alive last year when the college kids could not travel to Alaska.). The sun does not really set in Fairbanks for much of the summer, and the Midnight Sun baseball game is played starting at 10pm with only natural lighting: no field lights are used. I picked these specific AbD dates because the last AbD day lined up with that game, so timing was perfect! And this is why we needed in Fairbanks by dinner, so we could make it to the game!

Nearby Fairbanks is Eielson Air Force Base. A couple of F-35s from the 356th Fighter Squadron did a flyover at the end of the National anthem to commemorate the return of this year’s game, which was awesome!! The base is so close, the pilots arrived I think around the third inning watch the rest of the game. There was a big cheer from the crowd when they were introduced. I lifted this photo from the Goldpanners Twitter feed -



Here are a couple of pictures from game, taken at midnight - one of the sun not yet set, and one of the field. You can see how light the field is with no artificial lighting needed.





Thanks to @sayhello for her original Alaska AbD itinerary trip report that included Fairbanks. https://www.disboards.com/threads/t...last-frontier-part-1-image-intensive.2294383/. She has some great info about Fairbanks sites and hotels that was very helpful for planning our days here. After reading @sayhello Fairbanks report, I moved us to the Sophie Station Suites, same hotel used by AbD when the trip included Fairbanks.

Due to Alaska Airlines canceling our original later morning flight on Wednesday & moving us to a 3am departure, we opted for just two days & one night in Fairbanks, changing to Tuesday evening & red eye flights home to get a nonstop from Anchorage to LAX. Thus, we had about a day & a half here, which was sufficient time for what I wanted to see along with the baseball game.

After we landed in Fairbanks & got checked in to the hotel, we were off. The plan was to see some things farther outside of city the first day, & stay in the city the next day so we’d be closer to the airport. First stop was the Alaska Pipeline Viewpoint, because we were here and had a car so why not and when would I ever be back? It was an interesting stop.


Next up was a quick stop at Walmart for some seat cushions for the game, because our seats were on bleachers. I’m really glad we had those, because a pretty good thunderstorm had passed through in the afternoon & the bleachers were wet at game time.

After that, we drove out to North Pole, Alaska, about 20 minutes east. Now we can say we’ve been to the North Pole! Not the true “North Pole “ above the Arctic circle but still a fun visit. Most of the light poles and business signs are striped red like a candy cane. The main draws are the Santa Clause house, a huge shop with both Christmas and North Pole-branded items, and the adjacent “Reindeer Academy” where kids can see and meet some of Santa’s reindeer. We skipped that, having just seen reindeer at the AWCC. Also, while we were in the shop the huge thunderstorm was passing through. As we were strategizing how to get back to the car with minimal soaking, there was a pause of a few minutes so we were able to quickly walk to the car before the rain started again.



Next stop - the Fairbanks Ice Museum. Each year in March, Fairbanks hosts the International Ice Carving Championships with blocks of ice cut from the surrounding rivers. Year-round, there is the Ice Museum in a former theatre in the historic downtown area. After a short film about the prep for and carvings at the Championships, we were able to enter the cold storage area to see several sculptures on display. They had some warm jackets available to borrow if needed. These are amazing!



After wandering among the sculptures for a bit, the resident ice carver did a small demonstration for us. He took a drill and a block of ice, and with a few flicks of the wrist to control the drill bit, we had a flower with the word “Love” carved backwards so it would read right to us.

We grabbed some quick dinner & headed back to the hotel for some naps before going to the Midnight Sun game. The locals were very excited and happy to have the game back, and the home team won.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Our second day in Fairbanks and last day in Alaska started with breakfast at The Cookie Jar restaurant across town. For any Food Network fans, this place was featured on an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives a few years ago. I’d also read good reviews. We had a delicious breakfast! They had recently reopened for on-site dining, but had to close again for the dinner service the week we were there due to reduced staffing.

Back to the hotel to check out, and away we go. First stop today was the Large Animal Research Station (LARS), outside edge town a bit north of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) campus. The LARS is associated with UAF, and their research is focused on three Arctic animals - Musk Ox, Reindeer, and Caribou. We were there mainly to see the Musk Ox, which produce the Qiviut used in making those wonderfully soft and warm items made by the Alaska Natives. This was a very interesting stop, we learned a lot and saw a lot of animals up close. Same as at the AWCC, masks were required here. I’m glad we were there for the first tour of the day. It was going to be very warm in Fairbanks today, temps over 85; the tour guide said for later tours the animals would be far across the pens under the shade of the trees, and not very visible. By the time our tour was over, most of the animals were already under the trees or heading that way. Fun Disney fact - the males all had Star Wars character names and the females were named after Disney princesses.









Since we were so close, next stop was the UAF Museum of the North, said to be the best museum about Alaska history in Alaska. They have a very extensive collection, and this was definitely worth the visit. We saw exhibits on Alaska in WWII & the Japanese occupation of some of the Aleutian Islands, Japanese internment, early Alaska Native history, sea and mammal life, the gold panning frenzy with the largest public display of gold in Alaska, and some mastodon and the Blue Ox fossil discoveries. One of the more fascinating items - a 1917 Fairbanks High School diploma hand-written on moose hide.


Hard to see clearly, but the folio for the diploma has a hand-drawn moose on the front and dog or wolf on the back -



We then headed to Pioneer Park in central Fairbanks. This place has a lot of Fairbanks history, with many original cabins and homes moved here for education and preservation. A few were open, either as museums or used as shops. Our bad timing with Alaska railroads continued here, as the train that goes around the park was not running due to work on the trestle. A few of the shops & buildings were still closed, and even though the Air Museum had signage that it had reopened, it was closed the day we were there. One thing of note is the Presidential railroad car used when President Harding became the first US President to visit Alaska in 1923. The separate rooms inside the car were so small!



After a lunch of ice cream, because it was hot & we were still full from breakfast, we had a couple more hours before we had to head to the airport. Recalling @sayhello trip report & her positive comments about the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum, we decided to go over there to check it out. And we are very glad we did so. This was a great museum with a lot of vehicles; displayed alongside many of the cars were vintage period clothing, some plain, some warm (like the bearskin coats) and some very fancy Art Deco type dresses.

A fun find among the large elegant cars of the 1930s - a small rather plain-looking car, and the comments in the description included a reference to Mickey Mouse! It was the American Austin Series 475 Coupe. It said one of these cars was seen in one of Mickey’s early cartoons; the write-up did not say which one, but near as I can find it might have been “Traffic Troubles”.



This museum also has poster-size enlargements of some interesting old photos of early cars in Alaska. They are displayed on the walls above the cars. We ended up walking around the museum twice, once looking at the cars & clothing and again to look at all of the photos. Here’s one that really caught my eye - it was taken July 1, 1928. Check out how deep the snow still is, and the ruts the car is trying to use to get through.



We had one last view of Denali on our flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage. I wasn’t expecting it since I’d booked seats on what I thought would be the non-Denali side of the plane. However the flight patterns took us far on the west side of Denali. A nice goodbye as we left Alaska and headed home.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Here are some final thoughts on traveling this Alaska AbD in a Covid world -

We didn’t feel as isolated as the “travel pod” concept seemed to infer might happen. We had plenty of opportunities to interact with other travelers. It was a bit harder to have conversations on the bus since we were so spread out. There might be only one other group close enough across the aisle & up or back a row, but off the bus it was easy.

We felt we got to know the people on our bus very well; the people on the other bus not so much. But, this didn’t feel any different than a “normal” AbD where people will interact some some travelers more than others. The only difference here was our groups were chosen for us by virtue of bus assignments. We had a good group on our bus, and there seemed to be some thought into the bus splits. Ie, the two single parents with teenage boys were in our bus so could be paired off as we started being grouped at some of the meals.

The AbD guides were not the “Covid police”. They did not have yardsticks to keep us at least three feet apart. We’d sort of naturally keep distance as we’d be off the bus, but there were times when we might be closer than 3 feet and no one worried. People were able to be at their own comfort levels. On the wagon rides around the farm, it was one bus per wagon & no one was three feet apart as the wagon wasn’t big enough, & no one seemed concerned.

Can’t speak for the other bus, but on our bus everyone respected the mask requirements when on the bus. The busses were also the only place where we continued to have assigned seating for distancing. I’m not sure when things might return to one bus; when I was speaking with the guides on the last day about the meal changes, one commented that she was looking forward to when they’d be back to one bus. So it didn’t seem that change was coming quite yet with the next tour.

While the guides had to wear masks all the time both indoors and out, until the end when their outdoor mask requirements were relaxed a bit for them, guests did not need to wear masks when outdoors unless the location required it, ie the Alaska Native Heritage center or the reindeers at the AWCC. Some people had their masks off all the time when outside while for others it was 50-50, again whatever people were comfortable with. For us, since we’d come from mask-mandated California, we’d sometimes forget to take our masks off because we were so used to wearing them all the time. No one hassled anyone that I saw for wearing or not wearing masks outside.

One thing missing was the daily pin distribution. The guides never said anything about them, so I finally quietly asked on Day 3. They said our pins would be a surprise mailing to our homes after we got back, to minimize the contacts that would take place with passing them out on the trip. The day after we got home, my box with the pins arrived -



Meals - we only had individual assigned tables at the welcome dinner. In Talkeetna, we were assigned two groups per table keeping the pairings within our own bus group. At the first morning breakfast, my sister & I were in the room set with our breakfast buffet early with one other couple who were part of a larger pod of 8. We had 9 travel pods & there were only eight tables set up with six chairs per table, so if the entire AbD group had shown up at the same time we couldn’t have all sat separately. Since the tables were 6 feet in diameter & it felt weird to not join them, we asked & they were OK with us sitting across from them at the farthest apart. We’d been closer than that to them in the elevator and in line waiting to be served. One of the guides came up & I asked if it was OK to share since we were six feet apart; the guide seemed a little hesitant but said yes. After hanging out socializing and eating as a normal group for lunch later that day at the lake, I quit asking and quit worrying about it. We got to know another couple on our bus at the lake and found ourselves sharing a table with them at some of the group meals….no one said we couldn’t or asked us to separate. We noticed some others also sharing tables at times. And at the farewell dinner it was sit wherever you want with 2 or 3 pods per table. Our table had us, the other couple we’d gotten to know from our bus, and one family from the other bus, so there was mixing it up across the busses.

I appreciated that Disney relaxed things as we went along, as their protocols updated. It was definitely fluid and evolving. We were not locked into the protocols in effect at the start of our tour.

Photos - while the guides could not take pictures with guest cameras, there was some camera sharing between guests to get some group pictures when the guides were not nearby to take a picture, and no one seemed to mind. We also couldn’t do large group photos of the entire tour group. Looking through the photos the guides posted for our downloads, they took 620; some are scenery or animals, not all are photos of people. I’d never have guessed they took that many, as I rarely saw them taking pics. Maybe because we couldn’t do the large group pics, they weren’t as obvious. Their heavy picture days were Lake day, Denali day, and puppy day, accounting for 83% of the guide pics. Other days were very light on guide pics. And, some pics they took didn’t make it into the downloads. Ie during the welcome dinner, they took pictures of each pod at our tables, but in the downloads only five of the 8 table pics are there; ours is one of those missing. (One group arrived after that dinner due to flight schedules.)

We didn’t get any direction or rules on what we could or could not do during our free time, re masks, meals, groups, etc.

My one wish - I wish Disney had been a bit more transparent about changes, both good and not so good. For example, they told me the railroad trip & Denali activities couldn’t happen but never explained why. In doing my own research for a possible solo RR trip, I learned about the RR modified schedules for this summer. When some in our group were sharing disappointment over missing the RR trip, I seemed to be the only one who knew it was due to RR schedules rather than Disney initiated. For the first timers, they maybe didn’t miss the pin distribution but won’t understand the post trip box because there was no explanation on what the different pins represented. And when things opened up or relaxed, the changes just happened without any comment like “hey, you can now share tables”, or “guides can now remove masks outdoors”. Maybe Disney was intentionally trying to be low-key, but I think it would have helped clarify some things with more explanation or transparency.

Aside from the train and Denali activity changes, which were out of Disney’s control, I felt the Covid related changes to our tour were minimal & did not take away from our enjoyment of the trip. We are very glad we decided to go on this adventure. For me, there’s still too much uncertainty around international travel, so this trip was a good way to get our travel feet going again. It felt so nice to travel! We felt comfortable and safe the entire time, and didn’t feel like a lot of the typical AbD experiences were missed or forfeited.

Thanks for reading along! Please let me know if there are any questions about any aspects of our trip.