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An Arctic summer! Bears, bald eagles and having a whale of a time in sunny Alaska
True, for most of the eight long, dark months of the year, when dog sledging and the Northern Lights are the main reasons to visit.
But summer in America's largest - and only Arctic - state heralds a season of energy and adventure; of hiking, fishing, whale-watching, moose and bear-spotting, and some of the world's most scenically spectacular rail trips.
My hotel overlooks Lake Hood. There is a sense of awakening as people tinker with the float planes moored on the thawed water. With great swathes of Alaska unreachable by road year-round (you can't even drive between Anchorage and Juneau, the state capital), small planes are treated like buses and about one in 50 people has a pilot's licence.
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However, the vagaries of nature are the price for all this beauty, and the view from the deck of Alalik Voyager is of a ghostly seascape suddenly swirling with mist. 'A pair of sea otters swimming on their backs at 10 o'clock,' sings skipper Kerry from the bridge. Then 'bald eagle at three o'clock' and '...a huge herd of Steller sea lions on the rocks at nine o'clock'. Good thing we can all tell the time, especially when 'blow at one o'clock' announces the surfacing of a humpback whale with the girth of a Boeing.
More startling encounters awaited in Denali National Park. Another ride on the railroad took me inland to this vast tract of wilderness, which is bigger than Wales. The park is home to Mount McKinley (aka Denali, meaning 'the great one' in the native Athabascan language), the highest peak in North America. At 20,320 feet it dwarfs surrounding mountains and has its own weather system leaving it frequently shrouded in cloud.
No bears. But we do chance on a huge moose cow moving slowly through cottonwood and alder, and some powerful caribou bulls bending their antlers to drink. On one side of the trail is the rattling river, milky and bluish on account of its glacial origins; on the other, steep mountainside with arc-horned wild Dall sheep perched on rocky ledges. We pause at a glade next to a long beaver dam at the edge of Horseshoe Lake.
From here we have a clear view up to sparkling glacial peaks. Kris points out to me some of the famous fangs, which I will skim on my glacier-landing flight the next day. Short of a week-long mountaineering expedition, the only way to get up there is by plane.
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