Denali: Lodging and Their Little Town
After a long day of traveling and a fun morning of riding the train, we had arrived in Denali. There are it seems three major lodges that you can stay at in Denali near the little town. There is the McKinley Chalet Resort, the Grade Denali Lodge and the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. There are as well two lodges you can choose from within the park called the Denali Park Village and the Denali Grizzly Bear Resort. We opted to stay at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge as it gives us access to the little town and is nearer to activities outside of the park, like the ATV rides that we did later that day. We also chose the Princess lodge because they were rated highly, and, since they were connected to a cruise line, I wanted to check them out. If you are on a Princess cruise tour, you will obviously stay at their lodge, but a cruise tour with Celebrity and Royal Caribbean will have you staying at either the Denali Park Village or Grande Denali Lodge.
That morning at the train station when we checked our bags (each person can check 2 bags) we told them that we were headed to the Princess lodge. We were assured that our bags would arrive at the lodge. And, we were able to get on a complimentary motor coach that took us directly to the lodge. Once at the lodge, we were told that our rooms would be ready after lunch and that our bags would be delivered directly to our room later on as well. We knew that our luggage had made it to Denali because we had AirTags in all of them. I highly recommend this as it helps to ensure where your bags are located while traveling.
We went to lunch at Fannie Q’s Saloon, which was just okay, especially at the price point. We would soon learn, however, that almost everything in Alaska was very expensive. We got into our rooms after lunch, which were typical hotel rooms, nothing fancy. One thing that we wish we had known about was the fact that some buildings had rooms with exterior facing doors (like ours) and some rooms had their doors facing into a hallway, which would have been nicer. In the future, when booking in Denali, I will be sure to inquire about that ahead of time.
Our bags were not going to arrive for a while so we had to head out on our ATV excursion wearing what we had on. We were picked up right in front of the lodge, as promised, and dropped off back at our lodge afterwards. We returned to our room extremely dirty from the ATV rides to thankfully find that our luggage had been delivered. Before showering and changing, we walked over to one of the convenient stores that was open and got some local beer for us to enjoy in our rooms. Then, we headed out for a quick bite at the pizza place on the property before crashing (jet lag is real).
The next morning, we got up early because our bodies were still on EST and we found breakfast at the lodge cafe (not complimentary). Then, we did a load of laundry in one of the accessible to customers laundry rooms. This turned out to be very affordable, very easy, and very necessary after our dusty ATV rides. Soon, it was time to be picked up for our Tundra Wilderness bus tour through Denali park. We were once again picked up in front of the lodge and returned to the lodge afterwards, as promised. That evening, we ate at the Grizzly Burger, where we had decent burgers and yummy boozy shakes. We were again very tired from the day’s activities and crashed on the earlier side.
Our view from the Grizzly Burger
On our final morning in Denali, we walked across to what seemed to be one of the only food places that was already open for the season. The food was fine but my eggs were cold and the coffee was just okay. We had one more activity, the dog demonstration at the national park, that we had time for before getting on the train to Anchorage. We were told that we could leave our bags with the front desk and that they would make it to the train station. The tricky thing is that most of the luggage leaving the lodge would end up at the place where Princess had set-up for them to stay that night. But, we were obviously not doing that so there was quite a bit of confusion about how our bags would get from the lodge to the train and then back to us in Anchorage. After a lot of back and forth, we left the bags with them and Chris made sure that they arrived at the train station (thanks in part to those AirTags). At the train station, however, they didn’t know what to do with the bags. We luckily grabbed them before they were perhaps going to be taken back to the lodge. Once we had them in our possession again, we were able to check them in with the train and make sure that they would be dropped in Anchorage. In hind sight, we would have been better off taking the bags ourselves to the train station and making sure that they made it on the train. It would have saved us a lot of worry.
Apparently, there are pros and cons to being in Denali during the first week of the season. The pros are that the wildlife is more active and the stay is cheaper. The cons are that many of the stores and restaurants in the little town were still closed (opening late that week actually in time for Memorial Day) and, since the town is essentially run by seasonal workers, many people working in Denali were still very new to their jobs and hadn’t learned everything yet. If planning the trip again, I would have planned to be there one or two weeks later so as to give everything a chance to open and get up to speed with everything.
All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Denali and were amazed by the landscape and wildlife that we encountered. Our stay at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge was fine, and it was nice that transportation to and from the lodge to all of our activities was included and convenient. I would probably want to check out the McKinley Chalet resort next time to see how they differ from what Princess offers. I would, I think, prefer to be closer to the little town, as opposed to the park, as it was fun to walk over to it to see what they had to offer. We definitely came away with some wonderful memories from our time in Denali.
